The Bacteria Whisperer

Last night on PBS my Studly Hubby and I were watching Nova, a show about science. It was really cool. They were showing some thing about how we should try to build an elevator into space, then they talked about how many Mayans there were before they all died all of a sudden (they had a population estimated to be the size of NYC!), and then they started talking about some "bacteria whisperer" and I thought, hey! Maybe this will be someone I know!

It turns out, it WAS about someone I know - in fact, a colleague in my field! So the piece was all about what I do (except she works with glowing harmless bacteria and I work with pathogenic bioterrorism bacteria - but both kinds of bacteria talk the same way and that's what we have in common). And one of my comrades from the lab I was in for grad school is now doing his post-doc with this person, and he was on TV too! I was so excited I almost knocked over our coffee table. You can watched the entire clip or read about it from this link.

The most inspiring part of the clip was this: the woman they were profiling, who is a PI at Princeton, in the National Academy of Sciences, and a Howard Hughes Fellow, is also a part-time aerobics instructor. At the beginning of the segment they showed her teaching an aerobics class first thing in the morning, and then going from there in to her office. I was so inspired! This is the only other bacteriologist (besides me) that I know that teaches aerobics in her free time. I found myself bonding with this woman that I've only met twice. Except I left that aerobics bit behind in Minnesota (or at least I thought I did) and now feel a little out-of-shape and behind-the-times. Maybe this will be the thing that inspires me to get back to it...?