David Wooster

After working on cystic fibrosis for 7 years, I earned my Ph.D. in biochemistry at Montana State University. I then traveled to Southern California at Children's Hospital Los Angeles where I studied meningitis in neonates (new borns). My project involved discovering how certain bacteria can survive in the bloodstream long enough to invade the brain.

After my fellowship ended, I began teaching and eventually rewrote several of my lectures into a novel. These were ideas I had kicking around which, over the course of the next 4 years, gradually grew into the fictional story of Benjamin Ketchum, a microbiologist from Montana who goes on a series of adventures to Egypt and other interesting locales. "Yeasts & Other Beasts" is based on my experiences after a decade in medical research.