October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, bringing attention to a disease that affects a growing number of people around the world. 232,620 new cases of invasive breast cancer were detected in 2011 alone.

The good news is that new treatments are catching the disease early and increasing the likelihood of survival. One of the most remarkable women in the prevention field is Jill Bargonetti.

Bargonetti's work focuses on the tumor-suppressing protein p53. ''She probably could have had a job at any institution in the world,'' said Dr. Arnold J. Levine, the president of Rockefeller University, one of the researchers who has collaborated with Dr. Bargonetti. He invited her to join him at Princeton. Instead, this remarkable scientist chose to dedicate her life not just to research but to carrying out her work as faculty member of Hunter College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, where she acts as a mentor to young potential scientists from minority backgrounds.

''I knew that I was committed to mentoring minority students because there are so few black women in science,'' says Bargonetti. She serves as an incredible model, having won a National Science Foundation Early Career Award, a Presidential Early Career Award, and earlier this year, a New York City Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology.

The focus of her research and that of her students continues to address breast cancer head on. Now that's Character Approved.

[Image: City University New York]