Jon Arizti Sanz (he/him) spent much of his childhood cooking a lot of seafood with his grandmother in the Basque Country in Spain, pestering her with questions about the anatomy of fish.
“My grandma is not a biologist, so very often she was like, I don’t know why you’re asking these questions,” he recalled, laughing. “I don’t know what to tell you!”
While he didn’t become a marine biologist, Sanz has put those scientific instincts to use as an infectious disease researcher. He develops diagnostics based on CRISPR technology at the Broad Institute, trying to detect and respond to outbreaks as quickly as possible.
“I found infectious disease really interesting because it’s an area where medical interventions can have a huge impact not just on individual people, but on whole populations,” Sanz said.
A year into his role in the lab, the Covid-19 pandemic hit and Sanz sprang into action. Now, he’s working on diagnostics for the ongoing H5N1 outbreak among cattle. He hopes to delve deeper into the world of policy-making to improve infectious disease response more broadly.
Developing tests for disease outbreaks is an intense task, so Sanz has found outlets outside work to let off steam. In addition to cooking, he recently started dancing to salsa and bachata music. He never considered himself a dancer before, but now, he jokes, it’s practically his personality.
—Lizzy Lawrence
