ABOVE: © MICHAEL LECKIE
After pipetting countless solutions into tiny tubes as a biochemistry undergraduate at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, Johannes Kohl needed a break from science. So, upon completing his two-year pre-diploma, similar to an associate’s degree, he embarked on a yearlong trip with his girlfriend to South America. While he traipsed through the continent’s many jungles and cities, the 22-year-old Bavaria native began to itch for a new academic challenge.
“I actually can trace it back to this one day where we were basically stranded in this city in the Peruvian jungle,” he says. “Internet cafes [were] still a thing, and we were sort of bored and didn’t know what to do. So I just started browsing Wikipedia aimlessly.” Kohl kept landing on neuroscience pages and quickly became absorbed in the subject—so much so that later that year in 2006, he applied and was accepted to ...
