Impressed! Inspired!

I've told you this before, but I feel like rubbing it in your faces one more time: working at Fred Hutch is oftentimes exceptionally awesome and curiously stimulating. The opportunitites for learning about science and scientific perserverance are plentiful, and my latest surge of inspiration hit me with full force last Wednesday at a seminar with Nobel laureate Dr. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, during the first Conference on Cell and Gene Therapy for HIV Cure held at the Center.

This woman is nothing but remarkable; besides ignoring the men who advised her not to choose a research career and later co-discovering the HIV virus in 1983, she took on Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 by writing him an open letter protesting his tremendously ignorant and dangerous statement made in Cameroon, that condoms ”aggravate the problems” with AIDS.

*facepalm*

Dr. Barré-Sinoussi struck me as purely brilliant, brave, and empathetic; a scientist with stories and experiences I will carry with me for a long time.

”I don't have conviction, I have evidence. I'm a scientist.”
”If you're a scientist and you don't have hope, you should quit.”

My new idol.

You can read more about Dr. Barré-Sinoussi's Fred Hutch visit here.