For decades, Piri Welcsh has had professional and personal stakes in understanding the genetics of breast cancer.

In the 1990s, the molecular geneticist participated in an international race to clone BRCA1, the first gene linked to breast cancer risk, and she works to this day in the lab of pioneering breast cancer geneticist Mary-Claire King at the University of Washington.

And then there’s Welcsh’s own family. Her grandmother died of breast cancer, her mother is a breast cancer sur