Tara Kieffer fell in love with science during a visit to her father’s biology lab at Montgomery College in Maryland. Inspired by a model of DNA’s double helix, the 5- or 6-year-old Kieffer drew a replica of the structure that has hung on her walls ever since. “DNA was beautiful and it helped spark my interest in biology,” she says.
While an undergrad at Colgate University in New York, Kieffer’s fascination with biology grew through research experiences at the National Institutes of Health and the US Food and Drug Administration. But it wasn’t until Kieffer, as a new PhD student in 1999, visited Robert Siliciano’s HIV lab at Johns Hopkins University that she narrowed her scientific focus to the area she’d make a career of—infectious diseases. Siliciano’s work in HIV therapy represented an opportunity to get involved with a rapidly growing area of research, she explains. “I just knew that ...
