After receiving an M.Sc., Plant Pathology, from the Agricultural University of Athens (where her grandfather, Stavros Papandreou, had been President, 1919-1959), Dr. Leda Raptis, born, Athens, Greece, 1950, attended McGill University, 1973, to continue her Plant Virology studies. A Ph.D. from Sherbrooke University was followed by postdoctoral studies at Princeton and Harvard universities before joining the National Research Council, Ottawa, 1984. In 1986, she joined Queen’s University’s Microbiology Department as Assistant Professor, becoming Associate, 1992 and Full Professor, 1997. With her Canadian-born husband, Kevin Firth, a systems design engineer, they developed an apparatus for the electroporation of adherent cells. She has co-authored more than 50 papers on cancer viruses and edited and written two chapters of a book on Simian Virus 40, scheduled for publication in year 2000. An older and younger brother followed Dr. Raptis to Canada for their university education. The younger one, Stavros, is now a pathologist at Montreal’s Santa Gabrini Hospital. In this view, Dr. Leda Raptis is in her Queen’s University laboratory with the electroporation apparatus both she and her husband developed. [Photo, courtesy Dr. Leda Raptis]