Photo: Courtesy Yuan-Xiang Tao How can we help the ones we love, when we see them suffering? Yuan-Xiang Tao was motivated to dedicate his career to chronic pain research and developing novel therapeutics early in his youth, after watching his father battle liver cancer. Tao’s father passed away in…

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how do you create an image of real-time interactions inside the nervous system? “For the brain and spinal cord, that's a little challenging. Our goal is to shed light on this ‘black box.’ For a very long time, we simply…

Elissa Hallem wasn’t always immersed in the world of parasitic roundworms. In fact, she spent much of her early research career studying Drosophila, the common fruit fly. Inspired to pursue research after participating in Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth program, Hallem began volunteering in Larry Zipursky’s…

Maitreya Dunham gained research experience in many different fields as a student, from genetics to immunology to cancer, but one mighty model organism stuck with her as she set up her own lab to study experimental evolution and genetics: Saccharomyces cerevisiae. “That was one thing about the cancer world…

“One night, Jorge Lopez, my mentor in Guatemala during medical school, was playing the piano at a social gathering. While playing, he turned to me and said, ‘Can you imagine how many action potentials are triggered from my fingers and how many in your brain to interpret all this as…

“When I was a kid, it was math that always really fascinated me—I loved logic games. Sitting around doing puzzles with my dad or math questions, that got me going in that direction of problem solving,” remembers Rahul Kohli. As a high school student, Kohli began to see connections…

2010 Rita Allen Scholar Ye Zheng’s career in immunology was sparked by action and reaction. During his childhood in China, he was encouraged to explore science by his parents who were both engineers—his father an electronic engineer, and his mother an automation engineer. He followed their advice and discovered…

Samara Reck-Peterson’s research focuses on molecular machines—the macromolecules that transport intercellular compartments. Her work reveals how these life-essential mechanisms operate at molecular, cellular, and organismal scales. As a 2009 Rita Allen Scholar, she found the freedom to be creative in her research—exploring connections between “the cellular interstate system” and…

“I didn’t really know what a lab was or what research was until I got into college,” says Jeremy Dittman. As he approached the end of his freshman year at Stanford University, Dittman wasn’t sure of his career plans or even his summer plans until he had a lucky…

Sohail Tavazoie grew up in Utah after his family immigrated to the United States from Iran, escaping the Iran-Iraq war. As his parents created a new life for their family, working at a computer disk manufacturing start-up, Tavazoie and his siblings attended the local school system and adjusted to…