I was also with a family [where] my father and my mother that were incredibly passionate about questioning the world, so it was never about an answer, it was about the questions. In my family we had free range of asking questions and challenging everything, so our dinners or discussions were always about questioning and pushing and knowing and debating. I think very early I was taught that actually you learn by questioning and you learn by exploring. You don't take things for granted, so I think I was very, very privileged.

I had more questions, debates [than answers]. [My parents] listened to what we said, they always took seriously what we said. We may have been misinformed or wrong, that was not the point, but they allowed us to engage in conversation. They never pretended they had the right answer. I think something that I found very powerful in my education is I was taught by adults that never considered that things were absolute. There was no absolute truth, there isn't an absolute right [or] wrong. It was really about understanding the circumstances, the context, giving different perspectives. So, I think it was an extremely open-minded environment that really never guided us or created too much bias in the way we function or we saw the world.

Yasmine Belkaid is a renowned scientist whose research focuses on the relationship between microbes and the immune system. She is the President as well as the head of the Metaorganism laboratory at the Institut Pasteur.

Belkaid earned her Master’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene in Algiers, and a Master of Advanced Studies (DEA) from Paris-Sud University. In 1996, she earned her PhD in immunology from the Institut Pasteur, where she studied innate immune responses to leishmania infection. Belkaid then moved to the United States for a postdoctoral fellowship in intracellular parasite biology at NIAID’s Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases (NIH).

Belkaid has received numerous awards including the Robert Koch Prize, the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences, the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Prize, and the AAI Excellence in Mentoring Award. She also serves on the committees of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, the Microbiome Technical Advisory Group at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NIH Anti-Racism Steering Committee, the American Society of Microbiology, and the Genentech Scientific Resource Board.