By way of introduction, I share with you my entry in our high school class’s ten-year reunion yearbook, created in lieu of a major superspreading event.

What is your name?

Lydia Andreyevna Krasilnikova

Where do you live now?

Cambridge, MA, USA

Peabody, MA, USA—across the street from a Salem graveyard, so Salem for all intents and purposes (except for postal or museum discount).

What is your occupation or field that you work in?

I am a computational biologist. I study infectious disease and disease outbreaks. I also draw space cows @nightlyfieldlog and occasionally write articles about scientist culture.

What are some life events that have occurred? (marriage, children, education, achievements, etc.)

I got my SB and MEng and my PhD. My partner Cory and I have been together for almost nine years now over 12 years. We met in college (lived in the same dorm). He’s a mechanical engineer. No kids (yet).

What is one unusual experience you have had since graduating from State High?

Teaching was weird. One of my first times reserving a room for office hours I waited way too late and the room I got was a special room above the Museum. I got a message saying I would need to pick up a key. When I came by to pick up the key the person in charge was extremely flustered, told me I wasn’t supposed to have been able to reserve that room at all, and finally said I could have the room just for this week but that I and my students were not to eat anything while in the room and that we were absolutely not allowed to touch anything. Anyway, it turned out to be the human specimens room. It was full of skeletons, human skeletons and skeletons of human-like primates, and skulls on shelves behind glass, and stacked little cardboard boxes that I can only assume contained more bones. (In addition, the lights were automatic and apparently I don’t move that much because they kept turning off.) No students showed up to office hours that week.

I’m thrilled that you’re here. Thank you for visiting.

I recently defended my PhD at Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, where I studied (and continue to study) viral infections at the Sabeti lab at the Broad Institute. I majored in computer science and molecular biology and math and minored in writing at MIT, where I also got my MEng in computer science and molecular biology.

I work on pathogen identification and characterization through metagenomic and amplicon sequencing, which I use to study undercharacterized or novel viral species, interactions between co-occurring infections, and disease outbreaks, especially among vulnerable and underserved populations. Our latest big publication looks at a SARS-CoV-2 Delta outbreak in a highly vaccinated population in Provincetown, Massachusetts: Transmission from vaccinated individuals in a large SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant outbreak. If you’d like, you can read more about my science.

You might have met me blogging for MIT Admissions. Nowadays, I occasionally write for the MIT News section of MIT Technology Review. My latest piece is about Dr. Bonnie Berger’s life and work: “Data, data, data”. If you’d like, you can read more about my art and writing.

I draw space cows. You can follow their adventures at nightlyfieldlog on twitter, instagram, or tumblr. If you’d like, you can buy merch.

I have bipolar I, which has been complicated but has minimal impact on my current day-to-day life. I made stickers about it, in case you’d like to showcase your favorite psychiatric meds.

And, I suppose, I also write here. If you’d like, you can read my blog.