Angela Christiano, 45, an associate professor of dermatology and genetics at Columbia University Medical Center, studies hair. Last summer, she announced the discovery of the genes implicated in alopecia areata, the hair-loss disease that she herself suffers from. We spoke for two hours in her Washington Heights laboratory and then later on the telephone. An edited version of the two conversations follows.

Q. When did you first learn that you had alopecia?

A. In 1995, a time of big transitions in my life. After doing highly successful postdoctoral research on genetic blistering skin diseases at Jefferson Medical College, I’d arrived here at Columbia to start my own laboratory. I had just turned 30. I was getting a divorce. When you start your first lab, a researcher is expected to find something different from their postdoc work. For my first six months here, I sat thinking, “What am I going to do when I grow up?”

In the midst of all this, I went to a beauty parlor and the stylist said: “What’s happened here? You have a big patch of hair missing from the back of your head.” I ignored that. But the next day at the lab, I asked a colleague to take a look. She let out a bloodcurdling scream: “You have a huge bald spot!”

I immediately went over to the clinic here. They said: “Oh, you have alopecia. There’s not much we can do to treat it.”