Dr. Christian Happi

And then I was leaning against a tree.

And I remember sitting down and I asked my mom, why am I this ill?

And she said, well, the doctor said you had malaria.

And I told my mom, why is it that there's no cure or something that will prevent people from having this disease?

And my mom told me, I don't know.

And I remember telling her immediately that, mom, when I grow up, if this disease is still on, I will find a cure for it.

That was what I told my mom at that age of eight, nine.

A few years later, I saw a poster of James Watson and Francis Crick.

These were the two people that discovered the DNA molecule.

And my biology teacher was telling us that these are two alchemists.

They discovered the structure of the DNA.

The DNA is the most powerful molecule that exists.

That DNA is a molecule of life.

I could connect at that point what the molecule of life is and the malaria parasite.

I actually grew up chasing that malaria parasite.

I decided to become a biochemistry.

I studied biochemistry and then when I graduated with Flying Colors and looked for a master's degree program where they were studying malaria parasite.

I actually went to school at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria because there was a master's degree program that was studying biochemistry applied to malaria.

And eventually...

After graduating my master's degree program, I ended up at Harvard working on the malaria parasite, you know, trying to understand the genetic makeup of this parasite and try to see how you could use that genetic makeup to actually eliminate and kill that parasite.