Ariel Ruiz i Altaba was born in Mexico City, Mexico, but was raised in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, the youngest of three brothers (the other two are also scientists: a theoretical physicist and an evolutionary biologist). His mother was a painter and a writer; his father a chemical engineer who left academia to start his own business. From an early age Ruiz i Altaba was interested in science and nature, collecting specimens from the sea and hiking a lot. Though he was in a Catholic-leaning school, the fascist doctrine of Spain and of Francisco Franco impacted some of his early schooling until Franco's death in 1975; he considered his childhood pretty typical. Ruiz i Altaba had some good teachers, but many were unequipped to teach the subjects they were assigned, and so there was little- to no depth in any of his science classes. He matriculated at the University of Barcelona, but in his sophomore year he decided to transfer to New York University (NYU) in order to study molecular biology, a subject that piqued his interest after a lecture about DNA cloning. He spent three months in Angel G. Pellicer's laboratory before moving into G. Nigel Godson's lab after hearing a lecture on bacterial genetics from James R. Lupski (Pew Scholar Class of 1990), who was working in Godson's lab. Ruiz i Altaba finished his undergraduate degree at Columbia University but continued to work in Godson's lab, publishing his first paper, which was on the promotion, termination, and anti-termination in the rpsU-dnaG-rpoD macromolecular synthesis operon of E. coli. He moved on to graduate study at Harvard University under Douglas A. Melton, researching peptide growth factors and Xhox3, a vertebrate homeobox gene for anterioposterior patterning, and then on to a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University with Thomas M. Jessellon development and patterning in the nervous system, in particular the Gli gene regulation and signaling in hedgehog. From Columbia he accepted a position at the Skirball Institute at New York University. Throughout the interview Ruiz i Altaba reflects on the relationship between art and science and the notion of objectivity. He also talks about the grant-writing process; duties to his professional community; national research funding; the process of writing journal articles; the issue of patents; and the privatization of scientific research. At the end of the interview he discusses the role of scientists in educating the public; using art and the visual image to teach science; competition and collaboration in science; and the role of the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences in his work.