Bacteria, viruses, and other microscopic organisms are undetectable to the human eye, but they are everywhere, KeShonna Jackson ’24 writes in this Cornell Research profile of undergraduate researcher Brianna Johnson ’21. Johnson, who has had her own battles with diseases caused by microscopic organisms, found a passion for trying to understand their impacts and intricacies through biological sciences research.
“Growing up, I had all these infectious diseases, like Lyme disease and pneumonia, and it was personally interesting to think about how those diseases worked and why they were attacking my body,” Johnson says in the piece. “I think infectious diseases in general show a lot of societal inequalities, so it's important to increase our understanding to try to combat the inequalities that they engender.”