I was interested in science or, at least, nature from an early age, learning the names of planets, cutting cartoons with facts about animals out of the newspaper and gluing them into a scrapbook, and, with a friend when I was five or six, trying to design a submarine.

What I am primarily is a neurogeneticist: I use genetics to study problems in neurobiology. The one problem I study primarily... understanding of the sense of touch.

Trying to understand fundamental processes that take place as organisms develop and how their various cells interact with one another - one can see what happens with those cells by asking questions about the fundamentals of biology.

Scientific inquiry starts with observation. The more one can see, the more one can investigate.

One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.

We watch a lot of Discovery Channel, shows like 'The Biggest Loser' and even 'Amazing Race.' You learn a lot about the world, it's fun and nobody's interested in beating anybody down. And then the opposite: I'm a huge fan of 'Survivor.'

It's important that our children are raised to be educated, well-rounded tax-paying citizens that understand the importance of technology and science.

We know Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as politicians, but they felt that science was something everyone should have a knowledge of.