Q1. Who inspired you to become a scientist?

My science teachers in middle and high school! I had some really great ones who imbued me with a fascination for the natural world.

Q2. What drives your research interest?

Surprises, and discordant facts, mostly. When a result doesn’t match expectations, or when two well-established facts seem incompatible with each other, I am driven to get to the bottom of it and solve the mystery.

Q3. What is your current research focus?

I am fascinated by the thousands of evolutionarily novel, species-specific translated elements that are being discovered by ribosome profiling. I want to understand where they come from and how they contribute to change and innovation in biological systems.

Q4. Who are your current scientific influences?

I am most influenced by my PhD and Postdoc advisors, Marc Vidal and Trey Ideker, and by great biologists like Susan Lindquist, Jonathan Weissman, Harmit Malik, or Dan Jarosz. There are many others I look up to as well! What I find particularly inspiring is the balance between rigor and creativity that these scientists practice in their work, as well as their compelling scientific writing.

Q5. If you hadn’t become a scientist, what would your dream job be?

I want to say a nature photographer or zoo keeper but this is pure fantasy because I don’t have any of the talent or patience required for these dream jobs. Realistically, if I hadn’t become a science professor, I would probably have been a philosophy or literature professor instead. 

Q6. What are your hobbies?

I like to read novels and watch TV. In vacation, I love snowboarding in the winter and hiking in the summer.

Q7. What books influenced you the most?

This is the hardest question yet! I have to go with “existentialism is a humanism” by JP Sartre. It was required reading in high school, and it changed my life. Even my research is shaped by what I learned in this book, and I developed an evolutionary model after it (see Vakirlis et al, Nature Communications 2020)!

Q8. What are your favourite movies?

Legally Blonde: this movie showed young me that it was possible to have a serious career while simultaneously being a girl and having fun (this movie is also why I moved to Boston for my PhD!). I have watched many times School of Rock and A Christmas Story too.

Q9. What advice would you give your 18-year old self?

Don’t skip statistics class! It seems very boring now, but you cannot begin to envision how important a solid grasp of statistics will become in your future!

Q10. What, in your opinion, is the “next big thing” in the field of scientific research?

The pervasive translation of thousands of hitherto uncharacterized genomic elements is the most exciting area of research right now and in my opinion will lead to the next big discoveries in basic and applied biological science.