“I think I’ve just always liked science,” says Frank Longo, Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences and Professor, by courtesy, of Neurosurgery at Stanford Medicine (Stanford, CA, USA). In some respects, Longo’s childhood made it impossible not to. His mother, a nurse, avidly consumed medical research literature and scattered scholarly journals in close reach of the young Longo, who would devour their contents with an insatiable curiosity. “I just thought the body was so cool,” he explains.