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Pip: Dr. Bishal Gyawali apparently went to ASCO, announced a fellowship, recorded a podcast, and still found time to tell early-career oncologists not to outsource their critical thinking — which, honestly, tracks.
Mara: This episode covers two territories: a new fellowship partnership that connects a young oncologist from Armenia to Cancer Groundshot mentorship, and a practical guide for getting the most out of the ASCO Annual Meeting.
Pip: Let’s start with the fellowship announcement and what it actually means for global oncology training.
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A New Fellowship Takes Root
Mara: The Cancer Groundshot fellowship has a new backer, and the first fellow under that arrangement has been named — so the question this segment answers is what this partnership is, who it serves, and why it exists.
Pip: The announcement came straight from the ASCO stage. Dr. Baloyan, the first BG Lab-Oncodaily Virtual Fellow, put it plainly in her own words: “I would love to gain the perspective of what I should do in order to develop strategies in LMICs to make sure patients have access to the standards of care, to clinical trials without facing extreme and unbearable financial burden.”
Mara: What that means in practice is that the fellowship is explicitly oriented toward equity — not just training a clinician, but building someone who can design systems that remove financial barriers to care in resource-limited settings.
Pip: Dr. Tamamyan, announcing the Oncodaily partnership, said the fellowship embodied the spirit of spreading cancer education and mentorship equitably and globally. Dr. Baloyan is already an editor at Oncodaily, so this is a deepening of an existing relationship.
Mara: The fourth episode of the Grounded in Groundshot podcast fits right alongside this — it features Prof. Ian Tannock, an emeritus professor from the University of Toronto, discussing how mentorship shaped his own career as a clinical trialist and what he advises fellows building independent research careers.
Pip: Two different formats, same underlying argument: structured mentorship is what closes the gap between a brilliant early-career oncologist and the infrastructure they need to do meaningful work.
Mara: That infrastructure question — who gets access to trials, to training, to the tools for critical interpretation — runs directly into what the ASCO resource guide is trying to solve.
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Making the Most of ASCO
Pip: The ASCO resource post is essentially a curated reading list for early-career oncologists, and its premise is that attending a major meeting without preparation is a waste of the opportunity.
Mara: The post opens with a direct address — “Hello trainees, mentees, residents, fellows, early-career oncologists” — and then closes with this: “Don’t outsource critical thinking. Think for yourself.”
Pip: That’s the spine of the whole list. Every linked resource is a tool for reading trials more skeptically — how to interpret endpoints, how harms get softened by language like “well-tolerated,” why overall survival keeps getting deprioritized as an endpoint.
Mara: The collection includes guidance for first-time attendees, fourteen tips drawn from attending every ASCO since 2017, and a separate piece specifically for those joining virtually — arguing that virtual access levels the playing field for oncologists who cannot travel.
Pip: The virtual equity angle connects back directly to the fellowship conversation — access to the meeting, access to mentorship, access to trials, all variations on the same structural problem.
Mara: Dr. Gyawali was also presenting at multiple sessions across the meeting — discussing oral abstracts in global oncology, presenting research on adjuvant chemotherapy access for immigrant versus non-immigrant patients in Ontario, and appearing at the Grants and Awards ceremony.
Pip: The Ontario colorectal cancer poster is worth flagging separately — it takes the abstract equity argument and grounds it in a specific patient population with measurable outcomes.
Mara: And his annual ecancer highlights review, which he has produced for over a decade, gives attendees a post-meeting synthesis of what actually changes practice — a resource that extends the meeting’s usefulness well past the closing session.
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Pip: Whether it’s a fellowship in Armenia or a reading list for Chicago, the throughline is the same — who gets the tools to think critically, and who builds the systems that make equitable care possible.
Mara: Next episode, we’ll see what that work looks like once the meeting ends and the real research begins.
Dr. Bishal Gyawali 
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