She Worked in a Harvard Lab to Reverse Aging, Until ICE Jailed Her [ NYTimes ]

The flava:

Dr. Peshkin’s team is interested in sperm and egg cells, and how they repair damage as an embryo develops. They needed someone equally fluent in machine learning and cell biology, Dr. Peshkin explained in a post on Kaggle, an online community for data scientists. Ms. Petrova reached out.

When she arrived in Boston in May 2023, Dr. Peshkin was shocked to discover that she had not brought a suitcase; she carried a backpack. It became clear, he said, that she was “extremely ascetic,” entirely wrapped up in her research.

“I thought the Russia of my childhood was gone, the Russia of this crazy, dedicated, ascetic scientist is gone,” he said. Over the months that followed, Dr. Peshkin watched her focus intensely for many hours; he saw what she could pull off in a few days of coding. “She is probably strongest I’ve seen,” he said. “I am at Harvard for 20 years.”

Ms. Petrova found ways to speed up everyone’s work. . . . 

The article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/science/russian-scientist-ice-detained-harvard.html