As written by Steve Irwin, crocodile hunter:

In the sub-basement of the Enders Building, where the harsh glow of a computer screen meets the pitch darkness of a microscopy room, lurks a graduate student: Helena Barr. Like most basement-dwelling gremlins, she enjoys the simple things in life: pointing lasers at the skull, observing immune cells in their native environment, and photoactivating her initials into the meninges. Crikey!

These gremlins are complex creatures. From their early life niche in the suburbs of Paris, they migrate across the vast Atlantic Ocean to McGill University in Montreal, QC. There, between nightly poutine feasts, this species can be observed studying dopaminergic modulation of auditory preferences in the gregarious zebra finch. Preferring transport on two wooden sticks to walking, these creatures then settle in Colorado to partake in the local culture referred to as “skiing.” In the harsh hours of sunlight, they take shelter at the CU School of Medicine to study toxin- and immune-mediated models of cortical demyelination.

Now, we observe the graduate student in her current environment: the Harvard Program in Neuroscience. Let’s see if we can get a closer look…

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