Riley Drake studied a possible link between chronic hepatitis C infection and diminished proliferation and functionality of CD8 T cells in affected individuals at Massachusetts General Hospital. She also worked as a laboratory assistant in Jonathan Powell’s Immunology Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, studying the effects of mTOR in the context of both in vivo and in vitro models. Drake is currently a Thiel Fellow on leave from the undergraduate program in molecular biology and statistics at Boston College. As a Thiel Fellow, she is working to apply physical principles to virology using biophysics to create broad-spectrum viral therapies.