A childhood fascination with the image of a scientist led Budhaditya Mukherjee, an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur) and an EMBO Global Investigator Network (EMBO GIN) awardee, to a career studying one of the world’s most adaptable parasites, Leishmania. In this profile, he reflects on research, resilience, mentorship, genome plasticity, and how understanding pathogen evolution may help address drug resistance and chronic infections.