Sally K. Sommers Smith is a biomedical scientist who traded the lab bench for the joys of studying and playing traditional music. She has been a Visiting Researcher in Traditional Music at the University of Limerick, and also studied traditional Irish music in Boston at Boston College. A fiddler in the Irish and Cape Breton traditions, she has published and presented widely on adaptation and evolution in traditional music, particularly in migrant traditions. She is currently at work on a book on traditional music transmission at summer music camps, as well as statistical studies of repertoire change in Cape Breton.