[My son] was one and a half [when we moved to America for my postdoc].

I think it was a bit complex [moving my young son to America]. I was lucky enough; I had a little cousin that came to stay with me for a couple of months and then she left and I found a little daycare close by. I learned how to be incredibly efficient.

I think the attitude at the time was, this is your problem. I think women that have had kids know, that was our problem. We had to make it work. No, I never really had specifically sympathy or support. I didn't have hostility either, but sympathy, no. The system was not designed to help you. You were supposed to make it work and I think me and many other women had to make it work. I had a daughter during my postdoc and it was the same thing. I mean this was the [United] States, so only six weeks of maternity leave and that was it. You had to make it work with no family around and that's how we did it, me and many other women. That's what I'm saying, times have changed and have changed for the best. There are still ways to go, but we had to make it work and the job was for us to make it as invisible as possible.

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.