Hello!
My name is Maya Iskandarani, and I’m a freshman at Duke from Miami, Florida—meaning I’ll probably be in trouble once the temperature in Durham drops below 50°.
Messing around with an electric circuit in the Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) at The Island School. Source: The Island School Communications Team.
Though I might be poorly prepared for “real” seasons, I’m no less excited to start my adventure at Duke. For now, my academic interests lie in Biology (particularly Genetics and Marine Science), Earth and Ocean Sciences, Neuroscience, Spanish, Arabic, and French. I’m also in the Genetics and Genomics cluster of the Duke Focus Program. As you can see, I have some intense self-reflection to do before I declare a major.
I’m a walk-on to the Duke Women’s Rowing team, and feel very lucky to start fresh in an awesome sport with fantastic coaches and teammates. I also participated in Project WILD this summer, camping for two weeks in Pisgah National Forest without much prior camping, hiking, or backpacking experience. Otherwise, I’ve fought my instinct to jump into a million cool extracurricular clubs and programs, so I can get a handle on this “college” thing before I bite off more than I can chew.
In high school, I was an editor for the school newsmagazine (s/o highlights), president of the International Baccalaureate Honor Society (IBHS), vice president of the environmental club, Gables Earth, and a scooper at Whip ‘n Dip, an ice cream shop down the street from my house. I trained with the club swim team Miami Swimming for six years, and competed for my high school swim team for four.
My first taste of research was volunteering with Dr. Claire Paris of the University of Miami in my junior year of high school. I spent a few weeks helping then-PhD-candidate Dr. Erica Staaterman (a Duke alumna!) complete her dissertation on the relationship between marine soundscapes and biodiversity. My role was small, but fascinating: I used a computer program to manually filter hydrophone recordings from coral reefs in the Florida Keys for boat noise.
Preparing for a boat dive off of Cape Eleuthera, with underwater slate in hand to take notes on coral reef life. Source: The Island School Communications Team.
My experience in Dr. Paris’s lab spurred me to further explore marine science, so I applied to attend The Island School over the summer entering my senior year. I spent a month in the blazing heat of the Bahamas, freediving through the same crystal-clear waters in the mornings that I returned to study on SCUBA in the afternoons. Although I’m not quite set on Marine Science as a course of study at Duke, I absolutely intend to spend a semester or two at the Duke Marine Lab to figure it out.
My curiosity in nearly all academic subjects pulls me in a hundred different directions, a few of which I hope to follow through with as part of the Duke Research Blog team. I can’t wait to meet researchers who are passionate about their work, and, perhaps, discover a research passion of my own.