ABOVE: To work out the details of her experiments, Janelle Ayres often writes on the glass windows of her lab.
© SALK INSTITUTE
Growing up in Livermore, California, Janelle Ayres kept all kinds of pets—rabbits, birds, fish, turtles, and her two favorites, Smokey the Siberian husky and Roman the German shepherd. She dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, but learning about genetics in high school led her to study molecular and cell biology at the University of California (UC), Berkeley. She then had to choose among vet school, med school, and a PhD program. Attending a talk by Stanley Falkow, whom she calls “the godfather of microbial pathogenesis,” helped her decide to pursue microbiology. “I loved the idea of host-microbe interactions,” Ayres tells The Scientist, “and that pathogens could be having such dramatic effects on the host’s biology.”
After graduating in 2002, Ayres moved to Stanford to work with microbiologist David Schneider. ...
