En Ze Linda Zhong-Johnson is a Microbiology Ph.D. candidate in the Sinskey and Voigt Labs at MIT. Linda has been fascinated by biology from a young age, and was sure that her career would involve some sort of biology. As an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, she gained an interest in research and did her undergraduate thesis work on protein crystallography and vaccine immunology. It was in her undergraduate thesis work that she was exposed to the metabolic diversity of microorganisms and the potential of harnessing these metabolic pathways for biotechnology. On a trip to Alaska after graduation, she was shocked to see the pristine and plastic-free landscape, and that sight had a profound impact and changed the course of her research. She became a strong advocate for reducing single-use plastic waste through behavioral changes and became interested in microbial biotechnologies to reduce plastic waste and pollution. Her current work at MIT involves engineering poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET)-degrading enzymes from the bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis to improve its activity for industrial bio-recycling of PET.