Babak Javid is a physician-scientist in the Division of Experimental Medicine at UCSF, where he moved to in 2020. He trained in medicine at the University of Cambridge, completed residency in general (internal) medicine in London and returned to Cambridge as a Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Training Fellow for graduate studies under Paul Lehner, investigating cross-presentation by human dendritic cells to cytotoxic T lymphocytes. Following specialist training in infectious diseases, he went to Harvard as an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellow to train with Eric Rubin in mycobacterial genetics, where he first became interested in ‘unique’ aspects of the mycobacterial translation apparatus. From 2011 to 2020 he was Principal Investigator at the Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing, China.