I do recall myself saying, at some point in the past, "My kingdom for a female lead with a STEM degree" (though I think I was talking about paranormal romance, I bet I didn't specify). This definitely succeeds, there!

The main and side characters are all delightful, with a villain you love to hate. The best friends of the romantic leads are particularly charming, with lots of witty banter. Although it's an m/f pairing, it isn't a book full of straight people, which I appreciated (and which makes the setting more believable, as well).

I'm super squeamish about professor-student pairings, but this one's a young professor (tenured early) and a PhD student, with no formal professional relationship (no advising, no classes in common, etc.), in a large enough department where that's presumably realistic. It's still enough for me to take off a star from an otherwise fantastically done book, but your mileage may vary; I've taught graduate classes, and I want a PhD, so it probably hits me differently.

Occasionally, the dialogue is probably a little more undergraduate STEM level than is realistic for experts in the field, which pulled me out of the story a bit, but that's entirely understandable: a book has to appeal to a broad set of readers to sell copies. And if they'd spoken at too high a level, I, not a biologist, wouldn't have been able to follow, either.

Anyway, I happily recommend it, but with a content warning about sexual harassment of a woman in STEM.