© ADAM LERNER PHOTOGRAPHY INC
Jermaine Jones’s first memory of being a “bit of a scientist” was discovering that toilet water is actually pretty clean. While conducting a science fair pro-ject during his junior year of high school in Virginia, he learned that “you get much more varied bacteria from the toilet seat as opposed to the water,” he explains.
With encouragement from his aunt, who was a biologist, Jones chose to pursue a degree in science at the University of Virginia. Over the course of several undergraduate internships, he got a taste of different fields of research, from probing decision making in mice to examining the analgesic effects of rainforest plant extracts in Brazil. By the time Jones had earned his master’s degree from Old Dominion University, he was ...
