Peter Agre is director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, which celebrates its 10th birthday this year. Before turning his focus to malaria, Agre won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2003 for his discovery of aquaporins, water channels in cell membranes. Agre spends a third of his year in regions of the world where malaria is endemic, mostly in Zimbabwe and rural Zambia, but he has never had the disease.

Rachel Saslow of the Washington Post recently spoke with Agre, 62, about malaria, his scheme to meet actor George Clooney and how he got a D in high school chemistry.

Read the interview, via: The Washington Post.