Seena Ajit had reached a crossroads in her career. She was working at the pharmaceutical company Wyeth, but what really excited her was the microRNA research she had been pursuing on the side. At an inflection point, she attended a meeting of the Keystone Symposia on molecular and cellular…

Ben Black attributes his early fascination with science to his fifth-grade teacher, a former industrial chemist, who lost a finger in a lab explosion. Black explains, “I can probably credit my teacher at the time, Al Nubling. He was just an incredible teacher—the best teacher I had in the…

Aaron Gitler began his scientific career as an undergraduate at Pennsylvania State University, where he volunteered in a lab washing dishes. Despite the less-than-glamorous work, he loved being there. Eventually, he realized that if he finished his dishwashing early enough, he could observe students and postdocs doing their research…

Alejandro Sweet-Cordero’s journey into research and medicine began during his high school years in Mexico City, where he volunteered as a paramedic, providing medical aid to people injured in car crashes and other emergencies. Sweet-Cordero’s volunteer work, combined with a scholarly interest in biology (and science in general), led…

Emmanuelle Passegué had a rather unglamorous introduction to research as a young college student in France. Initially attracted to the field by fascinating papers filled with beautiful images of clean, unambiguous molecular mechanisms, the realities of working with fruit flies for biological research turned out to be quite different.

Ming Li’s love of science began at an early age growing up in rural China. His grandparents were farmers, and he spent most of his childhood exploring the fields around his house, “being really close to nature,” as he fondly remembers. These experiences helped shape his interest in becoming…

Steven Altschuler began his journey into mathematics and science at an early age. Growing up in a household enriched by discussions of discovery and art, he naturally was drawn into these deep subjects. “My father is an astronomer and I grew up in a house where I just assumed…

Mark Zylka discovered the excitement of pursuing a scientific question in high school. His high school science teacher, Robert Foor-Hogue, led a hands-on course in which Zylka and the other students designed research experiments to address their individual burning scientific questions. It was then that Zylka appreciated that the…

A series of bold experiments led Li-Huei Tsai to her career-defining turn toward neuroscience.

From his earliest experiments, Ron Vale has investigated the movements that make life possible: the productive growth of plants, the division of cells, and the transit of signals through the long axons of neurons. His work, both within the laboratory and beyond, is marked by a persistent…