I have always focused on basic research, motivated by a desire to understand the world.

There's already a lot of active research going on using the Crispr technology to fix diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy or cystic fibrosis or Huntington's disease. They're all diseases that have known genetic causes, and we now have the technology that can repair those mutations to provide, we hope, patients with a normal life.

One of the problems in the biotech world is the lack of women in leadership roles, and I'd like to see that change by walking the walk.

The impression sometimes created among the public is that scientists are working away in their labs, and maybe they're not always thinking about the implications of their work. But we are.

I was very focused, very motivated and I had good tactics,

I was kind of a nerdy, geeky type. And I loved math. People teased me about it. I felt pretty much like an outcast.