I’m YunChu. In my former (read: pre-Duke) life, I was a dashing cow mascot/enthusiast, sousaphone player, and preschool teacher.

Charming a bride who desperately needed a Chick-fil-A milkshake after her wedding party

Charming a bride who desperately needed a Chick-fil-A milkshake after her wedding party

Since then, I’ve played the bassoon with my professor at a local Durham bar, drank my fair share of subpar Turkish beers in the beautiful city of Istanbul, and spent a disproportionate amount of my college career standing in front of the extensive chocolate bar selection in our beloved campus café, Bella Union. Now a senior at Duke, I’m scrambling to figure out the meaning of life along with my thesis topic and slowly coming to terms with my (appalling) recent discovery of the fact that you cannot spell YunChu without the “unc”.

Sometimes I get to do cool things like write briefs for congressmen or explore data management options for the White House Switchboard. This time, as you might have inferred from the title of this post, I’ve acquired the newest and coolest job on campus where I’ll be going around bugging friends, professors, and strangers alike about blogging their research—I’ve finally found a good excuse!

Join me as I document my last year of exploring this rich community that is Duke Research, brought to you in cocktail conversation-esque snapshots. We’ll be marveling over elegant solutions, chuckling over quirky explanations, and having a grand ole’ time appreciating just how diverse and incredible our friends and colleagues really are.

headshot_yunchuBy YunChu Huang, Duke 2016