Each month, Look Who’s Talking features voices from across the Brigham answering a thought-provoking question. This month, in honor of CRN publishing on Valentine’s Day, we ask members of the Brigham community to tell us what sparked their “love” for their field of study. If you would like to add your voice to the conversation, please submit a comment at the bottom of the page.

David Levine

“Home is where the heart is. Where is there a more impactful place to care for patients? Once you realize your field of study is truly where your patient lives, laughs and loves, it’s hard to look anywhere else.” –David Levine, MD, MPH, MA, Physician and Researcher, the Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care (Read more about Levine’s work on the Home Hospital project here.)

Kate Gregory

“My love for gut health and nutrition was sparked by the patients whom I took care of as a nurse. I have always been fascinated by intestinal biology, and while caring for preterm infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), I became curious about how this biology might play a role in health and disease during early life. There is still much that we do not know about gut health and nutrition, but it’s an exciting time in our field with new studies published almost daily.” –Kate Gregory, PhD, RN, Associate Chief Nursing Officer, the Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Women and Newborns

Pierpaolo Peruzzi

“The miracle-like feeling of playing around with the code of life is addictive, particularly when you realize that, occasionally, it ‘listens’ to you. I love to believe that these rare glimpses will eventually help my patients—any patients—in their fight against brain cancer.” –Pierpaolo Peruzzi, MD, PhD, Principal Investigator at the Harvey Cushing Neuro-Oncology Laboratories and Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery

Lydia Pace

“My love for all of my research comes from interactions with patients. In Rwanda, I work on projects to promote earlier detection of breast cancer in highly rural, underserved areas, and I am also working to examine barriers and facilitators of high-quality breast cancer care. My passion for this work came from meeting many strong, resilient and courageous women with breast cancer in Rwanda and hearing about their experiences being diagnosed very late and struggling to get timely care. Particularly when we face challenges in our research, I am heartened by knowing that our patients think that the questions we seek to address are important.” –Lydia E. W. Pace, MD, director of the Women’s Health Policy and Advocacy Program, Connors Center for Women’s Health & Gender Biology

Zara Cooper

“I love studying geriatrics and palliative care in surgery because older, seriously ill patients in particular are some of the most vulnerable individuals we care for in acute care surgery and in the surgical Intensive Care Unit. Too often, medical care is so disease-focused that we do things to treat the disease and not the person living with it. Palliative care and geriatrics are both focused on helping patients live as well as possible for as long as possible within the context of their overall health and values. Bringing this perspective to surgical care through rigorous research, advocacy and teaching is a deeply meaningful to me. Day to day I see how our work positively impacts the patient and family experience.”—Zara Cooper, MD, MSc, Acute Care Surgeon, Trauma Surgeon and Surgical Intensivist; Deputy Director for Strategic Planning and Partnerships for the Center for Surgery and Public Health