Harmit Malik got his BTech, Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India where he first became interested in molecular biology and selfish genes. He moved to the US to get his PhD in Biology studying Drosophila retrotransposons at the University of Rochester, NY, under the mentorship of Prof. Thomas Eickbush. He moved to Seattle to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (the “Hutch"), to do his postdoc with Dr. Steve Henikoff. Dr. Malik is currently a Full professor and co-Associate Director in the Division of Basic Sciences at the Hutch, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The Malik lab studies the causes and consequences of genetic conflicts between different genomes (e.g., host-virus interactions, mitochondrial conflicts with nuclear genomes) or between components of the same genome (e.g., chromosomal competition at centromeric regions). Dr. Malik’s work has received significant accolades, including the PECASE award (2008), the Vilcek Prize for creative promise (2010), the Eli Lilly Prize in Microbiology (2017), and election to the US National Academy of Sciences (2019).