LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY
For many undergraduates, an internship at a wastewater treatment plant might not provide the most alluring introduction to the microbial world. But for Neslihan Taş, then at Marmara University in Istanbul, learning how sewage from millions of people was converted into safe wastewater “really made me . . . realize how big of stewards microbes are to our world,” she says.
Taş began taking more biology courses as she earned her bachelor’s degree in engineering and then enrolled in a master’s program in environmental technology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. It was her microbiology lab coursework there that ultimately enticed her to change career paths. “More and more, I realized that we actually do not understand biological systems well enough to be able to ...
