When Dr. Sheila Wang returned to Massey College as a Senior Fellow, it felt like coming home. A former Junior Fellow during medical school, she remembered Massey as a sanctuary—a place where ideas, curiosity, and community thrived. It was here, through Massey Grand Rounds Program, that she first met Junior Fellow Rachel Tyli, a connection that would grow into a powerful research partnership.
Their collaboration began with MGR20 and the Women in Leadership @ Massey event, and soon expanded into joint research on how digital tools and imaging technologies can improve diagnosis and care pathways in dermatology. Sheila and Rachel can often be found working side by side in the Junior Common Room: planning studies, reviewing data, and mapping out next steps for their projects. Sheila also mentors several Junior Fellows, including Evan Chan, Erin Lou, and Taryn Keenan, creating a true “lab community” within the College.
Sheila describes Rachel as “brilliant, organized, insightful, and the driving force behind our research.” As a new hospital physician and investigator, she credits Rachel with helping keep their projects moving forward—so much so that they’ve been successful in every grant application to date. Rachel, in turn, calls working with Sheila “an incredibly fulfilling experience,” highlighting Sheila’s mentorship as foundational to her growth as a young researcher.
This shared commitment recently culminated in a major achievement: their project, Seeing the Unseen: Closing Gaps in Dermatology Care, won both the Karen Green Courage Award and the People’s Choice Award—a combined $100,000—plus an additional $85,000 in community-supported funding. This investment will help their team address long-standing inequities in dermatology and transform how skin conditions are detected and treated in people with darker skin tones.
