Fern

When people swap stories about "nightmare first dates", I tell them about the one time I went on a date with a Middle Eastern Studies masters student who refused to teach me anything about "the origin of ISIS". I personally believe that any time spent learning something is worthwhile, even if it's not obvious at the time. Any boring dinner or sleep-inducing seminar can be salvaged by discovering a new paper to read or Netflix original series to watch. It's when I don't learn that I get cranky.

When I'm not trying to get people to explain the Middle Eastern crisis to me over tepid cider, I'm trying to carve a name for myself in the virology field. As an undergraduate I worked with tospoviruses, an important plant pathogen, but I've now been upgraded to human viruses, specifically HIV. When not in lab, I'm either reading, writing or kickboxing (where I like to go by the name Spastic Starfish).