Sonia Vallabh

Why you should listen

Sonia Vallabh runs a prion research laboratory at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard alongside her husband, Eric Minikel. Originally trained as a lawyer and transportation engineer, respectively, the two shifted into biomedical research after learning in 2011 that Vallabh inherited a mutation that causes genetic prion disease: a rapidly fatal, currently untreatable neurodegenerative disease that typically strikes in midlife. Their lab’s mission is to develop a meaningful treatment in our lifetimes.