I think it's a testimony to my parents [that] we are all incredibly different. I mean all of us are very different in actually the journey we took or the profession we have and we are our own self. I give credit to my parents who have allowed us to be exactly what we wanted to become. I may have been a bit weird, the weirdest one of all, and I think that's why I became a scientist. My siblings: I have one [that is an] architect, I have another one that is in communication, another one that is an artist, there's a photographer, I have a sibling [that is] a musician. We have siblings in all directions and very much more in the artistic side I have to say.

I have a collective five siblings

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.