Lenka has always been interested in understanding how changes at the molecular level can lead to disease, particularly in neurodegeneration, viral infections and cancer. This led her to study Biochemistry (Molecular Biology) at University College London (2022–2025), where she became increasingly drawn to structural biology. Wanting to explore the molecular basis of disease from a structural perspective, Lenka went on to pursue an MRes in Structural Biology at Imperial College London (2025–2026). In our group, she studied structural ensembles of prion fibrils using cryo-EM (10-month MRes project). Lenka solved the structures of multiple prion amyloid fold variants and provided extremely valuable custom quantitative analyses of multiple cryo-EM datasets. She has now moved across the pond to start a Research Assistant II role at WashU, with plans to continue into a PhD in the Ghanbarpour lab.