 In medical school, I had the good fortune of being in a course in parasitology which was taught by a very good group of professors. I think it's the day when I had the opportunity to look through the microscope and to see the malaria parasite and then to hear about the cases internationally involving malaria. That was the day when I think the bug really bit me as far as wanting to work in infectious diseases and work in international health. In our program at the Naval Medical Research Center Malaria Department, we have an approach which has been referred to as bench-to-bedside or bench-to-clinic. And that is that we have our laboratory investigators and they're actually working in a bench setting, developing new strategies for malaria vaccine, testing those strategies if we are indeed able to develop a successful, effective, safe malaria vaccine that can be used not only for military personnel but also for the vulnerable populations worldwide. Malaria has had a major impact on our military throughout history. Malaria has had a greater impact on manpower than enemy fire in all of the conflicts that have occurred in tropical regions in the 20th century. So having a vaccine that we could give to our military personnel and to people who are diplomats or doing humanitarian efforts would be a real game changer. And I think being at the Navy, it gives you this chance to work with experts from all around the world. The Department of Defense has been working on malaria vaccines for many decades and I think that they are looking to us. They're looking to people who have the ability to do this kind of science to try to come up with something to stem the tide of this morbidity and mortality.