Nevertheless, like all areas of science, the most senior levels of cancer research do tend to be male-dominated. Dr Natrajan is reluctant to attribute this to some fundamental flaw in the scientific community so much as she sees it as a reflection of society at large: “There are gender biases in other professions as well.” And she’s keen to encourage more women to pursue careers as breast cancer researchers. “It is very rewarding and exciting.”

It’s not a perfect profession, but what is? Dr Natrajan says she struggles to switch off, “because you’re constantly thinking about the experiments you’re doing, and how you’re going to translate them into patient benefit. It’s not a 9-to-5 job – you carry this stuff with you wherever you go.”

But, she says, she wouldn’t trade it for anything else. “As a breast cancer researcher, you know you’re making a difference to patients’ lives,” she says. “You’re contributing to something really important.

“That’s something that you can carry around with you on a day-to-day basis and it gets you out of bed in the morning. Even when you’re having a really rubbish day, you know you’re doing something worthwhile.”

The Woman of the Week series is part of Stylist’s Visible Women campaign, dedicated to raising the profiles of brilliant women past and present. See more Visible Women stories here.

Why this pioneering breast cancer researcher is Stylist’s Woman of the Week