Given the unusual nature of organismic and microbiology departments, Cavanaugh says her department--Organismic and Evolutionary Biology--is another major benefit of working at Harvard.

As part of her new position, Cavanaugh is preparing to move into a newly-renovated lab three floors above her current location. Her new quarters should be finished on the first of July, "but it will probably be in the fall," she says.

She has decorated the walls of her office in the Biological Labs with images of pandas--her favorite animal--and her three-year-old son, Matthew Cavanaugh Gschwend.

The other loves of her life--bacteria--are already well represented in the lab's test tubes.

Asked what she would do with her life given the choice, Cavanaugh looks puzzled and responds, "Well, this," indicating her scientific domain with a sweep of her hand.

Cavanaugh says she and her husband, Philip Gschwend, a professor of environmental organic chemistry at MIT, joke about winning the lottery so they could avoid the tedium of writing research grant proposals.