In the spring of 2002, Irene Salter was on the verge of a successful scientific career. After attaining her PhD in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, the 26-year-old Salter secured a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship to study at the prestigious University of Cambridge. She was planning to build on her doctoral work, studying the neuroscience behind drug-seeking behavior in an animal model she developed at UCSF. Her potential for scientific achievement seemed boundless.





