The newly minted Dr. Stephanie Maya successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "Characterizing the mechanism of hepatitis B and delta virus host tropism in mice" at her final public oral today. Her work focused on elucidating the species-specific differences in HBV infection in order to overcome the restriction barrier towards HBV in mouse models for HBV and HDV infection. Stephanie has worked extremely hard to earn her PhD in Molecular Biology and achieve this incredible milestone in her career. She will be officially awarded the title of Dr. Maya at this year's PhD Hooding and Recognition Ceremony, with Alex as her doctoral mentor. We are all very proud of her and excited to see her achieve this significant accomplishment. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors!