2010 Rita Allen Scholar Ye Zheng’s career in immunology was sparked by action and reaction. During his childhood in China, he was encouraged to explore science by his parents who were both engineers—his father an electronic engineer, and his mother an automation engineer. He followed their advice and discovered a strong aptitude for chemistry thanks to a high school teacher who introduced him to the scientific method and experimentation. Zheng recalls, “I was just fascinated with all these different elements. That they can attract each other, and when you put them in liquids together, a reaction occurs—a precipitation forms, or bubbles, or the color changes. I always was fascinated by this, and that’s probably the first time I really wanted to actually do some kind of research.”

Samara Reck-Peterson’s research focuses on molecular machines—the macromolecules that transport intercellular compartments. Her work reveals how these life-essential mechanisms operate at molecular, cellular, and organismal scales. As a 2009 Rita Allen Scholar, she found the freedom to be creative in her research—exploring connections between “the cellular interstate system” and human diseases such as Parkinson's—and to take risks in pursuit of discovery.

“I didn’t really know what a lab was or what research was until I got into college,” says Jeremy Dittman. As he approached the end of his freshman year at Stanford University, Dittman wasn’t sure of his career plans or even his summer plans until he had a lucky encounter with a friend in his dorm. “One of my dormmates was really into research, and he convinced me to go find a lab for the summer. His dad is a genetics professor at the University of California, San Diego—I guess that sort of ran in the family there. He was the one who inspired me to give research a try, and then I just loved it! I was hooked from that point on.”

Sohail Tavazoie grew up in Utah after his family immigrated to the United States from Iran, escaping the Iran-Iraq war. As his parents created a new life for their family, working at a computer disk manufacturing start-up, Tavazoie and his siblings attended the local school system and adjusted to their new home. However, there was something that remained as a constant for him amongst these changes. "I have been captivated by science and science fiction for as long as I remember. My father was an engineer and my mother a teacher. They always took extra time to teach us and to provide rationales for their answers,” he remembers.

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 biology, where she met the Chair of the Department of Pharmacology & Physiology at Drexel University College of Medicine James Barret, who she learned was interested in hiring for his department.

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 public school. I didn’t have any scientists in my family, but Nubling had this background as an industrial chemist before he was a teacher, and he had sort of these ‘cool credentials’ because back in his chemist days, he had lost a finger in a lab explosion. That was quite exciting to hear about, and inspired this idea of, you know, mortal danger in the lab.”

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 experiments. In time, they let him do experiments of his own. “In retrospect, none of the experiments really worked out,” says Gitler, “but I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. It prepared me for my next research experiences.”

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…