Shazia Mitha, MSN, AG-ACNP-BC, RN is a Robert Wood Johnson Future of Nursing Scholar, exploring the long-term effects of cardio-toxic chemotherapies in women with breast cancer presenting with cardiomyopathies and heart failure with a focus on management of these patients post remission, genetic modulations and quality of life as they age with these changes. She is currently in the PhD program at Columbia University School of Nursing and planning a dissertation to develop a phenotype of a high risk breast cancer patient who may experience cardiotoxicity using natural language processing and other informatics approaches.
She earned her first Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Science with minors in Public Health and Economics from the University of South Florida, followed by a Master of Science in Medical Science, with a concentration in Neuroscience from 2008-2013, where she worked on stem cell treated mice with ALS. During this time, her grandfather became severely ill with cardiac complications which shifted her focus from laboratory research to clinical interventions. She then pursued her nursing education by completing a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and Master of Science in Nursing as an Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner from Columbia University School of Nursing from 2015-2018.
Since becoming a nurse, she has worked as a Hematology/Oncology and Radiation oncology RN inpatient and outpatient at Maimonides Medical Center in NY as well as a Clinical Research Nurse in Phase 1-3 Studies in Breast, GU, Prostate, and Melanoma cancers at NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center. She has continued to work on various research studies, including the iHEART Study (iPhone Helping Evaluate Atrial Fibrillation Rhythm Through Technology) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center with Dr. Kathleen Hickey where she served as a nurse research assistant using mobile health devices (Alivecor, iPhone and iWatches) to monitor patients remotely. She practiced as an Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner at NYU Kimmel in their Blood and Marrow Transplant Center when she realized that cardiotoxicity was affecting many oncology patients. She feels passionate about the future of cardio-oncology in advanced practice nursing and through her current and future work in her PhD program, she hopes to share and gain skills in biomedical informatics to advance the new era of precision medicine as a cancer nurse researcher.