In the world of science, Harvard geneticist Pardis Sabeti is a rock star. She also fronts a guitar-heavy alternative rock band from Boston. She was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1975, where her father, Parviz, was a high-ranking official in the shah’s government. Two years later, on the cusp of the Iranian revolution, the Sabeti family fled to the United States, eventually settling in Florida. “My father took one of the toughest jobs in the government because he cared about his nation more than himself,” Pardis says. “His courage and conviction have always driven me to want to make a difference.”

In the early 1980s, Pardis’ mother, Nancy, bought some old textbooks, a chalkboard and a couple of school chairs and set up a makeshift summer school in the family’s home for Pardis and her sister, Parisa, who is two years older. Parisa, assigned the role of teacher, put together lesson plans and gave out report cards; Pardis directed the “performing arts” and helped run phys ed. The wide-eyed, toothy Sabeti sisters undoubtedly made for a cute tableau, but the work they were doing was intense and focused. “She would teach me everything that she had learned the year before in school,” Pardis says. When September rolled around, Sabeti was almost two years ahead of her classmates.

It was during those years that Sabeti first discovered her love for mathematics. “My sister taught me addition and subtraction and multiplication and division,” she says, “so by the time I got to school, I knew it all, and when we’d do the times tables, I was just focused on doing it faster than anybody else. I already had the information, so it just got me to focus on excellence.”