Biologists From Ivory Coast

"I had a biology professor who helped us create a herbarium, and there was this common flower in the Ivory Coast that we passed all the time."

"Doing the herbarium and having to separate the petals of the flower, the sepal, knowing the names of the different structures."

"I thought, ‘oh, that's cool; can I know more about these things."

"Living in the Ivory Coast, we killed our own chickens, and we had to separate the different organs, essentially dissecting the chicken."

"I remember helping with this and learning about the body while doing so, the tendons and bones, internal organs, etc"

"I had this natural curiosity and wanted to know more."

"Infectious diseases are one of those things that we live with, and growing up, you had to get vaccinated."

"It's one of those things that is all around you, even if you don't really think about it."

"This was until I came to the US for college, and I took several microbiology classes."

"I found the topic really interesting, how there is a whole other world of microbes that we don't see."

"Microbiology is also at the intersection of so many different scientific fields."

"You can do a bit of biochemistry, immunology and even physics."

"You can do whatever you want as you study microbes."

"I just think microbes rule the world; even when we become extinct, they'll still be around, and that is very humbling."

"I also want to mention one person, Dr Zehava Eichenbaum, who really pushed me and inspired me to become a microbiologist."

"I was an undergraduate, I was looking for a job on campus and saw an advertisement for an undergraduate assistant in the lab."

"I popped into her office very naively; I had no concept of what an interview was at this stage, and she took a chance on me, probably because I was very enthusiastic and told her I could start in the lab right away."

"I gained my first proper lab experience, doing bacterial cultures and minipreps to isolate bacterial DNA."

"At the time, my dad wanted me to be a medical doctor, but Dr Eichenbaum jokingly said that I would waste my brain in medical school and that she would make me a scientist"

"She really believed in me, which I am really grateful for."

"I would say that the transition was not too bad for me at first."

"I was quite lucky because when I was a postdoc."

"I was doing some teaching and working in the lab, back and forth between the two, so I already had experience in balancing research with teaching."

"The hardest part was doing all the things behind the scenes that you don't know about, all the paperwork."

"I remember when I first saw my lab space, and that feeling of excitement and dread simultaneously."

"I had been in labs that were pretty established."

"I started thinking ‘I'm going to have to pay for all these things’."

"I did have a startup package, but as East Bay is a teaching institution, it wasn't as high as you would expect compared to research-intensive institutions."

"I was teaching three courses, one of which I had to develop for 140 students."

"It was quite daunting; I was also sitting on departmental and college committees, advising student clubs, writing grants, mentoring students in the lab."

"As I became more established, I had more people in my lab to look after, more students to teach and more grants to write."

"It is learning to balance these responsibilities that is the biggest challenge, but it's what you need to do to be an effective teacher."

"The main question of my research program is ‘how does Toxoplasma initiate infection in a new host."

"Part of that is asking ‘what are the molecular mechanisms that the parasite uses to interact with the gastrointestinal tract."

"Toxoplasma can infect orally using two forms, the product of sexual reproduction (the oocyst) that eventually sporulate to produce infectious sporozoites."

"I am focusing on bradyzoites because sporozoites are highly infectious."

"With bradyzoites, we can look at them in vitro and in mice and they can be easily deactivated."

"We are tackling this main question from several different angles."

"By trying to identify novel virulence determinants that are required specifically for that first stage of infection."

"We want to understand how Toxoplasma goes from a metabolically fast form (tachyzoite, during the acute phase of infection) where it divides rapidly, to a ‘slow’ form (bradyzoite) that divides slowly and is present during chronic infection."