For Swathi Arur, PhD, mentorship is the most human element of science — a practice that extends far beyond experiments and publications. She explains why receiving the 2025 Paul E. Darlington Mentor Award at this year’s Lab Coat Ceremony in October speaks deeply to her.

“Experiments succeed or fail, papers get accepted or rejected, but people grow, discover their strengths, and learn who they are,” she reflects. “I don’t mentor for recognition; to me, science is built on discovery, but discovery is built on people. Mentorship is how we honor that truth.”

Mentorship at the heart of science

Since joining the MD Anderson UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) in 2010, Arur has mentored numerous students and faculty members — guiding them to build confidence as researchers. She works to understand each person — their strengths, their anxieties, their goals — and to help them find their scientific voice.

“Watching a student go from tentative beginnings to confidently presenting at conferences or defending their thesis is one of the great joys of my life in science.”

Arur’s mentoring philosophy extends well beyond her own lab. “I love mentoring GSBS students and junior faculty across the institution, building community, helping people dream big, and ensuring they feel seen and supported.”

Paying mentorship forward

Arur credits her own mentors for shaping her career and teaching her that great mentorship is not about molding someone in your image, but helping them become fully themselves, a lesson she carries with her every day. “I am here because mentors believed in me at pivotal times, sometimes before I believed in myself.”

That lesson also became the cornerstone of her own approach. “My hope is that my trainees feel that same steady belief in their potential — not just as scientists, but as people.”

A legacy of leadership

This honor follows Arur’s recent recognition as a recipient of the 2025 D. Dudley and Judy White Oldham Faculty Award, underscoring her deep commitment to mentoring, teaching, and scientific excellence.

Arur and lab mates at 2024 team outing.

Arur’s research explores how signaling pathways and environmental factors control cell identity in two distinct biological contexts: the C. elegans germline, where the Arur Lab investigates intergenerational female fertility, and KRAS-mutant lung cancer. “Whether we’re studying fertility or metastasis, the unifying idea is the same: a cell’s fate is not fixed. Understanding what drives identity changes can unlock new biology and new therapeutic opportunities.”