Swaminathan Iyer, MD, is currently the Professor of the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Professor of Medicine at the Houston Methodist Academic Institute  and Weill Cornell Medicine. He completed his medical school from Bangalore Medical College, India and residency in Internal Medicine from Wayne State University, Michigan. He pursued a fellowship in Hematology/Oncology from Jackson Memorial Hospital, University of Miami, Florida. He is a nationally recognized leader in early drug development in hematologic malignancies. As the Section Chief of hematological malignancies and the Co-Director of the Cockrell Center for Advanced Therapeutics, he has an active role in the development of cutting-edge, targeted phase 1 therapies. He has been awarded Clinical Care Excellence Award from HealthNetwork and Virginia and Ernest Cockrell Presidential Award from Houston Methodist Research Institute and is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the American Society of Hematology. Pearls of Wisdom: That doctor-patient relationship is the basic unit of everything, and it's the magic, it's the healing that happens that turns the entire billion dollar industry for that one patient. This is not a one-man job, it's a network, it's a chain of multiple institutions and you can contribute in small ways to the patient care. When a student is sincerely ready the teacher is there, but the quest for knowledge and the journey starts within you. Have intent to help the patient, have sincerity and do everything in your power to help the patient, have the open-mindedness and the humility to understand the other's point-of-view, and have an unshakeable ethic of hard work. There are situations where you have to be the friend, guide, priest, and everything else for the patient you care for. The human dimension that gets added to oncology is very important, because you are then able to put yourself in the shoes of people and the families that are going through these illnesses. Your teacher doesn't have to be a mentor, it could be in the patient, because patients have a lot of insights. That relationship with the patient is actually a spiritual experience where you share many things on a mental and spiritual plane. As a coach you have to realize you're not the one running the race, you're trying to help someone run the race.

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