Zitat des Tages von Pardis Sabeti:
I was actually not some sort of a child prodigy by any stretch.
Especially working in infectious disease, it's very interesting because these infectious diseases, these agents, they evolve over time. So it's very much an arms race and understanding how each changes to protect itself and to continue. And so it's very much this puzzle-solving but with this great urgency and importance in what you find.
At 9, I think I had really gotten into tennis. I liked writing short stories; I loved solving math problems. I was learning a little piano, and I was collecting Garbage Pail Kids cards.
Generally, I'm not writing about genomes or anything like that. But people underestimate the creativity you use in science and the rigor you need in music. They basically have the same path.
It is of course very difficult to see relations between America and Iran becoming increasingly tense and knowing that it is not the people of the countries but a subset of leaders and radicals that are causing such strife. I am hoping that the spirit of the people will triumph.
There are so many aspects to science that I couldn't give up - the rigor, the discoveries, the teaching. The impact that science has on the world around us is something I'm enthralled with. I don't think anyone could ever take that out of me.
I am deeply immersed in my medical work, and it can get very intense, but I believe that the connection and devotion is key. You can not work on diseases as devastating and deadly as Lassa and Ebola without complete trust and respect for the individuals with whom you work. My lab and colleagues are just extraordinary, and we are a family.
My family fled Iran in October 1978 as a result of the coming revolution when I was two years old. In the early days, my entire family lived together in a very crowded house, where I shared a room with my sister, cousin, and grandmother, and we would all listen to my grandmother tell stories before bedtime.
The great thing about America is I've never felt like an outsider. I'm just a different piece of the puzzle.
I heard it in 2008 and hear it again now - this notion that the only reason one would support Hillary Clinton is because she is a woman - or only because she is experienced and smart. She is all of those things. But I am with her because... Hillary Clinton inspires me.
The process of discovery in my field is very incremental. But there are moments when you realize you know something about the world nobody else knows. That's extraordinarily exhilarating.
Let us not let the world be defined by the destruction wrought by one virus, but illuminated by billions of hearts and minds working in unity.
The Ebola epidemic was the most frightening outbreak I have witnessed in my lifetime, and I believe it was necessary to react globally as strongly as we did.
It's just difficult to see that people want to be like the actors and the performers and the politicians who are - who they see all the time, but the people that are probably having the most fun are the writers and the directors and the producers and the scientists, right, the people in the back that are getting to do the creative process.
My kind of, like, life goal is to help train students to be good people as well as good scientists. That would be my dream.
If there's a trait for not sleeping, I probably have it.
I have a B.S. in Biology from MIT, an M.Sc. in Human Biology and a Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from Oxford University, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. I never intended for so many degrees, but I enjoyed getting them all.
There is - I will just say that there was a disastrous day where I discovered really what radioactivity is and that just because you don't see it doesn't mean that it's not everywhere, so - Yeah. I was a slow learner for sure.
See, Ebola, like all threats to humanity, it's fueled by mistrust and distraction and division. When we build barriers amongst ourselves, and we fight amongst ourselves, the virus thrives. But unlike all threats to humanity, Ebola is one where we're actually all the same. We're all in this fight together.
