Joseph Fair hunts viruses. That’s his thing. The 37-year-old American loves chasing dangerous pathogens, studying them in secure labs or searching for them in jungles where the microbes lurk. In college at Loyola University New Orleans, he read “Virus Hunter,” about famed virologist C.J. Peters’s career chasing Ebola and other pathogens. Fair discovered a new calling. A few years later, he was working at Peters’s lab at UTMB. Peters recalls how Fair volunteered to work with hot viruses in the highest-security labs. “That indicated right away that he was going to do things,” Peters recalls. “It’s been gratifying to see him take up the cudgel.” Now, on the hotel deck, another famed Ebola hunter sits at a nearby table. Tom Ksiazek was recently tapped by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help in Sierra Leone. He and Fair work together at the Ebola emergency operations center. “A CDC legend,” Fair says with admiration after Ksiazek stops by to say hello.