Karla Kirkegaard is a thought leader in virology, trained in biochemistry in the laboratory of James C. Wang and in molecular genetics in the laboratory of David Baltimore. As a faculty member in the  'RNA World' of Boulder, Colorado and the innovative environment of Stanford University, her paradigm-shifting discoveries include the copy-choice mechanism of RNA viral recombination, the oligomeric lattices of RNA polymerases that form on membranes sculpted from the autophagy pathway and a powerful new approach to suppressing drug resistance in intracellular pathogens.