Dr Jane Everleigh was born 29 years ago on a corn farm in the endless flatlands of Nebraska, the daughter of a long line of farmers, certainly nobody anyone expected to be an intellectual prodigy.  And yet inexplicably, she was reading before she was two years old, doing algebra at age six and calculus at nine.  By fifteen years old she'd burned through everything the Omaha public school system could throw at her, and she was off to MIT.  She had her undergraduate degree three years later, and her first doctorate in theoretical quantum physics three years after that, with her thesis on quantum gravity received by her peers as a major contribution to the currently accepted theoretical understanding of field mechanics.  Another doctorate followed a few years later, and since then she's been a researcher and professor at MIT, one of the youngest tenured staff members the school has had (and definitely the youngest woman).

Based on just appearances, she's easy to underestimate: she's 5'1", petite and slender, looking like she could scarcely stand up to a particularly insistent gust of wind, to say nothing of taking a punch; the idea of her holding her own in anything resembling a physical confrontation is flatly laughable.  Shy and introverted, she is not the face or the voice of any group: unless she’s extremely comfortable with the people around her she doesn’t usually speak unless spoken to, and she reinforces the shrinking-violet image with a conservative slacks-and-sweaters wardrobe in cloud grey and mouse brown and quiet pastels.  Nonetheless she's pretty, in an understated, bookish sort of way, with dark shoulder-length hair, a light spangling of freckles scattered over the pale skin of her cheeks and nose, and alert, intelligent hazel-green eyes.  Though her MIT ID badge she wore when she arrived showed her in oversized glasses, they aren't in evidence at the facility, as she got LASIK a few years ago.