- [Crew member] Jaye, take one mark.

- No, you're fine.

(bright music) I definitely remember my first experiment.

I thought it was the most fascinating thing.

My name is Jaye Gardiner and I am a cancer researcher, but I'm also an illustrator.

When I was in first grade we did an experiment and it was literally putting celery into different cups of colored water and I thought it was the most fascinating thing.

Cancer is a very bad disease.

It's kind of when your cells grow way too much.

If you think of a cell like a seed like something that causes a plant to grow, the soil around it is what helps that grow.

So it can either be very, very rich with all of the nutrients that will allow that seed to grow or it could be super, super dry and if it's in a dry area, the seed won't grow.

So what I'm looking at is effectively that soil.

For a disease, we don't want it to grow so we wanna stay healthy, and that's what our bodies are like when it's a nice dry area.

So I'm actually trying to figure out how we can take a super rich nutritious soil and turn it into a very dry soil so that the cancer doesn't grow.

If I do the very literal translation of what I do I'm moving very small liquids from tube to tube that I sometimes heat up, sometimes I freeze, sometimes I spin it really fast but that's kind of the mechanics of what I'm doing.

Out of that, I get to see really cool things.

It's kind of hard to think about sometimes that all of that is happening just by moving small liquids around.

The way that I got to think about working on diseases in general, it kind of stems from my dad.

My dad had prostate cancer when I was 13.

I was really interested in diseases and how they might be passed on in families.

I just looked for places that had programs in cancer biology 'cause that's what I wanted to learn about.

As a kid I remember my mom had me very regimented so she was a stay-at-home mom.

She would come pick me up from school and I was granted a half hour of free time before I had to start my homework.

I knew that the faster I did my homework the faster I could go back to watching cartoons.

I had sketchbooks where I would try and draw all my favorite characters and so kind of probably where my love of drawing and arts came from.

Other than being a scientist, I am an illustrator.

I co-founded a group called JKX Comics and we make comics about science and the scientists who do that work.

This is a book that we made showing about seven different scientists.

This is the individual comic that I made.

Later sometimes when I'm coming home, I am drawing and learning about other types of science because I'm drawing the people that do it.

So it was a really unique way that I found that I can combine these two loves and also just share more knowledge.

My parents, they don't have a background in science.

I'm the first in my family to go to college, to graduate from college.

All of this that I'm doing now is just because I've had really great people that happen to come into my life to tell me about things that were possible for me.

I spend a lot of time reading comic books, watching cartoons, hanging out with my almost husband and playing with our two pet bunnies.

They're good buds.

(both laugh) When I look to the future, I want to kind of create my lab to be its own science comic making machine.

To have people that do communication, that do art, that do science, learn from each other and then create something that can go out into the world that wasn't there before.

I love teaching and mentoring young students and helping them figure out where they want to go in life.

The advice that I would give that you don't have to choose between your passions.

Sometimes I know it's hard when you don't see that combination in the world so you don't know that it's possible.

Sharing my story on this platform means that hopefully there'll be a little girl that was kind of in my situation that won't have to have all of the roadblocks that I did.

It means that someone else can find those opportunities sooner and get to where they wanna be even faster without listening to any naysayers that might be in their ear and just have the confidence for themselves to be like, no, I know that this is possible and that's what I wanna do.