Florence Pauline Basubas

Florence Pauline Basubas is a Strategic Consultant at Stealth Startups, Seoul, South Korea, with interest in Drug Discovery for Infectious Disease and Cancer, Environmental Protection and Sustainability, and Innovative Materials.

She holds Finished Bachelor of Science in Natural Sciences (Applied Biochemistry) and Social Sciences (Economics and Policy Making) from Minerva Schools at KGI, California, USA.

Currently, she is designing various research projects with hospitals in Korea to apply emerging technologies in healthcare. In addition, she is also working on finding out the mechanism on how estrogen kills estrogen-positive breast cancer cells after long-term tamofexin therapy. She has worked with drug discovery, and prognosis of infectious diseases (Dengue, Hepatitis, Ebola, and Marburg Viruses) and Cancer (Breast, Colon, and Lung Cancer).

Drug discovery is close to here since she got sick with Dengue when she was seven. While pursuing her bachelor’s degree, she was able to work in various laboratories around the world such as Institut Pasteur 🇰🇷, Friedrich Loeffler Institute🇩🇪, Barts Cancer Institute🇬🇧, and MD Anderson Cancer Center🇺🇸. She learned how Science was conducted differently in different parts of the world and realized that the true essence of Science is being able to apply what has been learned inside the classroom or laboratory to a borderless world. She believes that scientists should go out and share their discoveries and apply them in the real world.

Florence had great mentoring experiences owing it to her first mentors: her first supervisor and her thesis adviser. Her previous mentor challenged her as a young female scientist, inspiring her to promote male-female mentorships and to not be scared in pursuing Science despite her age, gender, and ethnicity. She was also introduced by her former supervisor to other principal investigators in the field of infectious diseases. Her adviser, an awardee of Forbes 30 under 30 in Science, has always encouraged her to be confident and work hard to pursue big dreams.

Working in the laboratory and being mentored during her undergraduate years made her realize that it would have been nice if she had a mentor when she was high school. She fondly remembers the time she competed for a national science fair, the first time she did a laboratory experiment and wrote on paper. One of the judges told her that she did not choose the best lab technique for her experiment. Despite her research teacher helped her a lot, having a hundred more students to look after has been a problem for her teacher. “Having a mentor would have been able to give me more personalized advice on which techniques to choose and how to write a paper” she added.

As a mentor, Florence wants to be an all-around mentor, always being there for the needs of her mentees. She would like to be the “barkada” type of mentor who will not just guide students with their research project, but being a big sister and a friend, encouraging them when in doubt and in tough times.

“Like all things, falling in love with Science is easy but staying in love with Science is a difficult choice you have to make every day” she said. For her, having a career in science is challenging. If you really love Science, the ultimate reward is being able to define the meaning of success and realize the essence of Science. “Celebrate both successes and failures because every time you fail, you just haven’t succeeded yet”.