To celebrate Pride month in the USA, Nature Neuroscience is having conversations with LGBTQIA+ scientists across multiple career stages to discuss their personal and professional experiences in research. In this Q&A, we are talking to Laura Huckins, an associate professor at Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, USA. Huckins’ research focuses primarily on the genetics of eating disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as the development of statistical and multi-omic methods for use in genome-wide association studies (GWASs).