To get his start in malaria research, Stefan Kappe had to trick his university into letting him study biology. Although he'd majored in biology in high school, his grades weren't good enough to enter the competitive biology research track at the University of Bonn in Germany. "In high school, sometimes you have other interests than studying," Kappe says with a grin.
After briefly trying out chemistry, history, and law, he found a loophole in the system: "You could enter the biology program if you went into the teaching track, not into the research track," says Kappe, who is now an assistant member of the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (SBRI). "I went into the teaching track biology program and then switched quickly over without anybody noticing. And it worked. So I kind of avoided this whole GPA thing."
Once in the program, he became fascinated by parasites, thanks to a parasitology ...
