As a child, Michelle Chang would sit listlessly in a University of California, San Diego, lab while her mother, a geneticist, ran experiments. As hours ticked by on the lab clock, the young Chang made a decision: she would not grow up to be a researcher.
But after only a handful of introductory science classes her freshman year at UCSD, Chang became so excited about chemistry and molecular biology that she couldn't resist science. The following summer she began working in a lab that studied how mobile genetic elements contribute to microbial community adaptation and the consequences for bioremediation in contaminated environments. Chang says "the experience of connecting science to real world problems through research" sealed her fate: she would be a researcher after all.
With degrees in chemistry and French literature from UCSD, the native Californian traveled to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for graduate school to study ribonucleotide ...
