Assert Yourself, Appreciate your Colleagues

Courtesy of Peg Skorpinski

Early indications: Except for a brief flirtation with writing at one point, I always wanted to be a scientist. Since I was young, I've loved biology and computers, and it's continued ever since.

How did I get here? I consider myself lucky being able to come to Berkeley after my postdocs, both because of the work I was doing and the coincidental increase of attention to my field.

Pivotal paper: I think the paper that caused the most discussion was my lambda phage paper in Genetics that I wrote with Harley McAdams and John Ross (A. Arkin, et al., "Stochastic kinetic analysis of developmental pathway bifurcation in phage lambda-infected Escherichia coli cells," Genetics, 149:1633-48, 1998). Besides trying to capture a great deal of information about an important decision in this phage's lifecycle and deeply understand its control, it also was a test of...