- [Instructor] Funding for the secret life of scientists is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

- Ethnobotany is the science that studies all relationships between people and plants.

My research focuses on the use of medicinal plans for healing.

I bring that knowledge to medical students, residents and doctors, to help them build a better and a trusted relationship with their patient.

People have faith in their herbal medicines.

Plants are there to cure all kinds of health conditions that people are confronted with.

It's fantastic.

I love it.

Well, when I was a child, I really loved Star Trek.

I was always glued to the TV, just watching the adventures of Spock and Kirk to boldly go where no man has gone before.

To seek out new lives and new civilizations.

As an ethnobotanist, I go out too far and remote areas in the tropics to study how local cultures use medicinal plants for healing.

Is something that is similar to watching Star Trek.

And I think I go to the field and meet new people and see how they are living and what they're doing and how they are healing themselves with plants.

12.5% of all living plant species are currently threatened with extinction.

A lot of these communities, they do not have healthcare.

By recording that knowledge about plants, which is often the only available kind of healthcare that people have, I prevent it from getting lost.

From all the results from the research, we would make a guidebook of the medicinal plants of that area and their uses.

As an ethnobotanist, you're really becoming a part of their life.

These are all new worlds to me and worlds that I can visit to boldly go where no woman has gone before.

- [Eddie] Music time!

1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7.

- Salsa dancing is something whereby you are no longer a researcher, you're a woman.

And of course as a researcher I'm very used to taking the lead.

Whereas in salsa, as a woman you have to be submissive.

You have to follow.

- Remember you're supposed to let the guy do everything.

- Our main teacher, his name is Eddie.

He was dancing with me and he said to me, "No, no, no, no, no, not this way young lady, now I'm gonna lead you".

So I was like, okay I try.

But you know, after a while I start to lead myself again and he says, "No, no, mommy, not like this.

I am the boss here.

You're my woman, you follow me, okay"?

I love that.

- What you're doing is a regular turn, that's it.

I do everything else.

I do everything else.

- Now as a scientist, you have to be neutral.

You have to be critical.

You have to be analytical.

So I feel salsa dancing taps into my emotional side versus the rational side.

And I love being rational.

It feels good being rational.

When I'm in the field, I always try to learn more about other cultures and I cherish all those moments.

And salsa dancing gives me a window into another culture, another life, another possibility.

I do not feel Belgian when I dance salsa.

I think I'm more like Spock, wise and critical.

That's how I like to see myself.

New York without the doubt.

Weeds are very inventive, creative creatures that grow in manmade habitats and are very successful at surviving there.

Mayonnaise, you don't eat French fries with ketchup.

That's a sin.

Richard Evan Schultes, because he's one of the founding fathers of botany and ethnobotany.

Saturday night fever, to see John Travolta dancing.

He's cool.

Aloe vera, because it's such a miracle plant.

I like all kinds of forests.

The most complicated I just learned was a flare, which is also called the suicide.

Which I still do not master.

I could, but I would mess it up.