Susan Hopkins, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine and radiology working to figure out how the lungs work — and in particular, what happens to the lungs under stress. Following a winding road that brought her from family medicine in a small mountain town in Canada to UC San Diego School of Medicine where she researches the effects of low oxygen and exercise on lung function, Hopkins’ interests all come back to her love of figuring out how things work. She studies high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), a unique condition that occurs only at high altitudes that causes the lungs to suddenly fill with liquid, and is trying to understand why HAPE is so easily reversible while other similar conditions in the clinic can be so deadly. In this episode, she talks with our intern Noah Lowy about her research and shares some insights into how athletic training and lung function are intertwined. Image: Pixabay