Ramin Shiekhattar, Ph.D., is an esteemed scientist, researcher and professor of human genetics at the Miller School of Medicine. As co-leader of the Cancer Epigenetics Program at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, he has poured himself into running a leading-edge laboratory that has made novel discoveries about the genetic mechanisms that lead to cancers.
He’s so entrenched in science, he said, “I don’t have time for a hobby.” But he does have a lifelong passion: poetry, something he considers part of the essence of who he is and where he comes from.
Dr. Shiekhattar was born in Iran. He moved to the U.S. in 1979, at age 16, to escape the Islamic Revolution, bringing with him a deep-seated facet of Persian culture. “The entire Persian identity is anchored in poems and poetry,” Dr. Shiekhattar explained. “Poetry is part of my DNA.”
That statement speaks to another aspect of his heritage, as well as Dr. Shiekhattar’s career aspirations. “Persian families want their kids to become doctors or lawyers,” he said, “but I always saw myself as a scientist.” He achieved that goal, earning an undergraduate degree in chemistry and a doctoral degree in biochemistry at the University of Kansas. He established a genetics lab at Philadelphia’s Wistar Institute in 1997 and was recruited by the Miller School in 2014.
“The entire Persian identity is anchored in poems and poetry.”
While Dr. Shiekhattar has devoted his career to exploring the molecular mechanisms of DNA and RNA, along with their interconnection to cancer, he’s never lost sight of his background in poetry. He participated in poetry competitions in high school and in college developed an appreciation for English-language poets. “I learned how they expressed themselves differently than Persian poets,” he said.
Dr. Shiekhattar has written his own poems for years, but lately he has discovered a tool that’s enhanced his output. “AI is great with poetry,” he said, explaining how he recomposes his poems with ChatGPT. “Let’s say I have written a short poem and ask the chatbot to put it into the style of Bob Dylan or Talking Heads — and brrrupppt,” he said, demonstrating not only the rapidity of AI but also his eclectic taste in music, which also includes jazz artists Art Pepper and Miles Davis.
His poems — both self- and AI-crafted — help Dr. Shiekhattar communicate with colleagues and friends. “Rather than answering in a scientific way, I respond in a poetic way,” he said. And, he noted, in poetry as in science, AI is a tool in need of human partnership. “It is about having good taste,” he said. “AI has no taste because it has no lived experience.”
Ultimately, however, Dr. Shiekhattar remains true to his No. 1 passion. “I’m not a poet,” he said. “I’m a scientist.”
He’s buried in science, deep in the code,
On circuits of logic, he endlessly rode.
“I’ve no time for hobbies,” he solemnly said,
While graphs and equations danced in his head.
But one thing remained, unmeasured by test,
A passion that stirred in the folds of his chest.
Not pastime, distraction, or fleeting delight
But poetry, burning through day and through night.
It isn’t a hobby, it isn’t a game,
It’s the shape of his soul, the sound of his name.
It’s ink in his blood, it’s breath in his lung
It’s the land that he left, and the tongue that he sung.
