Category: Faculty Page 1 of 20

The Key to Transforming Minds

On February 19, 2025

In Faculty, History, Humanities, Religion, Uncategorized

Global wars. Ever-advancing artificial intelligence. Uncertain economic and job market prospects. Climate change. Amidst a world filled with change posing deep questions, could humanities provide counsel to our pressing issues and lead us towards more fulfilling, enriching daily experiences?

Last week, I had the privilege to speak with Divinity School and history professor Polly Ha, director of the Transformative Ideas program and co-lecturer of “The Good Life,” an acclaimed course exploring the intersection of religion, philosophy, and other ethical issues. “The Good Life” encouraged Duke students, hailing from all disciplines and backgrounds, to slow down and incorporate more reflection and intention into their everyday lives.

Duke professor Polly Ha, faculty in the Divinity School and director of the Transformative Ideas Program

Why is “slowing down” a key principle of “the Good Life”? As Ha pointed out, “it’s more stressful to try to slow down, to rest and reflect, than to take an exam for some students.” This powerful statement prompted me to reflect on my own experiences at Duke. Is it true that, amidst the hurries of daily academics and extracurriculars, merely pausing and thinking has become a difficult task? Perhaps so. If this is true for first-year students like me, how much more severe is this syndrome for upperclassmen undergraduate and graduate students?

Ha approaches this topic fully empathizing with the busy lifestyle so many of us lead. “As the daughter of immigrant parents, the pace of my life has always been highly accelerated. The challenge of trying to slow down is something I can definitely relate to,” she commented. Ha identified this as a key reason why she required her Fall 2024 cohort to write down their reflections in physical journals so they could more clearly see their own growth throughout the semester.

Encouraging Civility — A “Good Life” class is in session. Ha prepares to call on a student while Professor Abdullah Antepli of the Sanford School of Public Policy looks on.

The course professors also prepared students to engage in active civic discourse, a key pillar of the Transformative Ideas program. “Many students expressed that during our course, they felt understood and affirmed by their peers, sometimes for the first time,” Ha remarked. While she acknowledges that the class is not comprehensive in covering all thought-provoking, debatable issues of our day, Ha believes that her class prepares students to tackle all types of topics beyond the scope of the class. This is evident in the course’s continual evolvement to respond to our rapidly changing world: this year, she introduced lectures on transhumanism alongside ancient traditions.

This appealing curriculum is far from the only major project Ha is undertaking. As an active author, scholar, lecturer, and administrator, she currently devotes much time to writing her newest book, “The Future of Freedom,” and researching history and its lessons on freedom and liberty. She is also involved in a multitude of interdisciplinary projects at Duke and beyond linking history and theology to fields as diverse as bioethics and public policy.

Ha was gracious enough to provide me with a sneak peak of “The Future of Freedom.” In her words, this book is tailored not just to fellow academics but a broader audience, a read suitable for novices like me. Reading the first chapter, I was already transported into a world where grappling with heated topics is appreciated and celebrated. I especially enjoyed Ha’s continued use of rhetorical questions as she elucidated the modern threats against every liberty we cherish. Quotes like “Can we take freedom of conscience, thought, speech, consent, and action for granted?” challenged my perspective on my relationship to the ongoing battles surrounding surveillance capitalism and privacy protection—and whether I, an involved engineering student with aspirations in healthcare, have a role to play in this predicament. Given the captivating read, I am confident that Ha’s inquiry into 1600s England will enlighten many readers and portray the significance of history in our daily endeavors.

As we chatted about history’s place within a larger interdisciplinary web of research active on Duke’s campus, Ha provided two incredible insights that could not be neglected in this blog. Firstly, she described history as “a spine that connects to many ideas,” contrary to the popular notion that it is solely a window into the past. If history is by nature interdisciplinary, why are renowned historical works still solely focused on primary sources, dates, and battlefield events? According to Ha, Duke’s interdisciplinary research scene is especially strong. “For me, as someone coming from some specialized cultures that did not have the same interdisciplinary superhighways, this has been something I deeply value,” she remarked.

From teaching “The Good Life” to researching freedom’s past, present, and future, Ha has contributed much to our scholarly community. By bringing the humanities into conversation with twenty-first century challenges, and offering the immersive opportunities provided by Transformative Ideas, her work promises to sow the seeds in students that will sprout into exemplary lives.

Invincible Insect Pests Don’t Faze This Researcher

By Guest Post

On January 9, 2025

In Animals, Biology, Faculty, Guest Post, Neuroscience

“My passion for what I do saved my life.”

Meet Ke Dong, a biology professor at Duke University. She’s a lover of nature, a great cook, and a Lupus survivor. About 20-25 years ago, she developed Lupus during her research years at Michigan State University. Her time with this autoimmune disease was not kind. “The Lupus brought depression,” she said.

Fortunately, she was surrounded by amazing peers and her passion: research. Dong’s research focuses on ion channels and their reaction to various toxins and stimuli. These ion channels are incredibly important to the physiology of insects because of their impact on neuronal activity.

However, her passion didn’t develop from thin air. Dong grew up on a college campus in southeastern China. With both parents leading careers as professors — her father in history and her mother in biochemistry — she had the amazing opportunity to develop her passions early in childhood.

Growing up, she “had never been afraid of insects” as her mother’s work focused on the development of an increased production rate of silk in silkworms. However, it was the incidents in the area around her that sparked her passion. People in the area were often poisoned from the consumption of insecticides from the rice they were growing. This piqued her interest in toxicology as she was curious about how these insecticides were toxic to the townspeople.

Combining her fearlessness in the face of insects and her interest in toxicology, Dong has found the best of both worlds.

Dong also loves to dabble in the culinary worlds of a diverse range of cultures. As she travels from country to country, she brings with her the memorable flavors of each dish she tastes. Once arriving back home, she immediately purchases cookbooks from those countries to add to her rolodex of culinary skills. As she reads each recipe on her nightstand, she dreams of ways to introduce various flavors and techniques into her dishes. A creative cook, she has no time for following measurements. Her kitchen is her sandbox and allows her to dance with each flavor in her pot, adding less sugar but a little more salt.

Dong has been through ups and downs in her life, but there’s nothing that’s going to stop her from her passion: research.

*Post by Eubey Kang, NCSSM Class of 2025*

The Dukies Cited Most Highly

By Karl Bates

On November 19, 2024

In Behavior/Psychology, Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Cardiology, Engineering, Environment/Sustainability, Faculty, Genetics/Genomics, Medicine, Neuroscience, Physics, Space

The Web of Science ranking of the world’s most highly-cited scientists was released this morning, telling us who makes up the top 1 percent of the world’s scientists. These are the authors of influential papers that other scientists point to when making their arguments.

EDITOR’S NOTE! — Web of Science shared last year’s data! We apologize. List below is now corrected, changes to copy in bold. We’re so sorry.

Twenty-three of the citation laureates are Duke scholars or had a Duke affiliation when the landmark works were created over the last decade.

*A couple of these Duke people disappeared from this year’s list, but we’re still proud of them.*

Two names on the list belong to Duke’s international powerhouse of developmental psychology, the Genes, Environment, Health and Behavior Lab, led by Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi.

Dan Scolnic of Physics returns as our lone entry in Space Science, which just makes Duke sound cooler all around, don’t you think?

This is a big deal for the named faculty and an impressive line on their CVs. But the selection process weeds out “hyper-authorship, excessive self-citation and anomalous citation patterns,” so don’t even think about gaming it.

Fifty-nine nations are represented by the 6,636 individual researchers on this year’s list. About half of the citation champions are in specific fields and half in ‘cross-field’ — where interdisciplinary Duke typically dominates. The U.S. is still the most-cited nation with 36 percent of the world’s share, but shrinking slightly. Mainland China continues to rise, claiming second place with 20 percent of the cohort, up 2.5 percent from just last year. Then, in order, the UK, Germany and Australia round out the top five.

Tiny Singapore, home of the Duke NUS Graduate Medical School, is the tenth-most-cited with 1.6 percent of the global share.

In fact, five Duke NUS faculty made this year’s list: Antonio Bertoletti, Derek Hausenloy and Jenny Guek-Hong Low for cross-field; Carolyn S. P. Lam for clinical medicine, and the world famous “Bat Man,” Lin-Fa Wang, for microbiology.

Okay, you scrolled this far, let’s go!

Biology and Biochemistry

Charles A. Gersbach

Clinical Medicine

Christopher Bull Granger

Adrian F. Hernandez

Gary Lyman

Cross-Field

Priyamvada Acharya

Chris Beyrer

Stefano Curtarolo

Vance G. Fowler Jr.

Po-Chun Hsu (adjunct, now U. Chicago)

Ru-Rong Ji

William E. Kraus

David B. Mitzi

Christopher B. Newgard

Pratiksha I. Thakore (now with Genentech)

Xiaofei Wang

Mark R. Wiesner

Environment and Ecology

Robert B. Jackson (adjunct, now Stanford U.)

Microbiology

Barton F. Haynes

Neuroscience and Behavior

Quinn T. Ostrom

Plant and Animal Science

Sheng-Yang He

Psychiatry and Psychology

Avshalom Caspi

William E. Copeland

Terrie E. Moffitt

Space Science

Dan Scolnic

Rethinking the Mutual Relationship Between Science and Justice

By Sarah Pusser

On November 16, 2024

In Climate/Global Change, Environment/Sustainability, Faculty, Field Research, History, Policy

When you think of environmental science, what comes to mind? Studies? Analyses? Hypotheses?

What about environmental justice? Clean air? Restoring forests?

Ryan Emanuel, an associate professor of Hydrology in the Nicholas School of the Environment, redefines these two concepts of environmental science — or shall I say, combines these two concepts. He appeared in person and on Zoom in the Trent Center for Bioethics series recently, presenting his new-ish book: “On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice.”

Through three compelling anecdotes, Emanuel showed us how environmental science and environmental justice can be viewed as a bidirectional relationship.

Story one:
After earning his degree in hydrology from Duke in the 90s, Emanuel pursued advanced studies in evaporation and carbon cycling. With an education, Emanuel began fieldwork — conducting studies and climbing tall towers (all the fun sciencey stuff). However, as a person from North Carolina’s Lumbee Tribe, he noticed the disconnect between his work and his community. He was acutely aware of a cultural emphasis on education –the expectation that you will use your education to give back to your community. He didn’t feel his work in hydrology was serving the Lumbee tribe’s interest, so he decided to change that.

Sean Jones from the Lumbee Tribe (photo by News & Record Final)

During his talk, Emanuel emphasized the significance of “accountability” and “motivation.”

“Examining our motivation can allow us to better understand who we are accountable to in our work… We are all accountable somehow, and we can be accountable in different ways to different groups.”

Understanding that his work had to be accountable for the Lumbee tribe, Emanuel became an ambassador for STEM in higher education. This new path enabled him to mentor youth with tribal backgrounds, prepare them for higher education, and even form strong relationships with them.

Story two:

The EPA says environmental justice is “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in environmental decision-making.”

Emanuel recognized that governments should be accountable for including the voices and opinions of marginalized groups — ‘all people’ — within their environmental decision-making. But Emanuel said there was a dissonance between these promises and reality. One example is the placement of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) where livestock are raised in confinement for agricultural purposes.

CAFOs in North Carolina are disproportionately located in communities of minority groups. Many issues arise from this, such as the pollution produced from CAFOs (air and water).

I was shocked to see the many ways that smaller, marginalized communities are affected. These issues are often relatively hidden — not surprising given that mainstream media usually focuses on large (easily observable) community-based discrimination.

Map of locations of CAFOs in North Carolina (photo by Jiyoung Son)

Emanuel began to look at the interplay between environmental science (observation, analysis, testing) and environmental justice (lived experience, regulations, fairness). He let go of the previous idea that environmental science only seeks to provide data and support to drive change in environmental justice. He began to ask, “How can environmental justice improve environmental science?”

Story 3:
Combining his accountability for the Lumbee tribe with his hypothesis about the bidirectional relationship of environmental science and environmental justice, Ryan Emanuel began looking into the observably negative impacts of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). Spanning over 600 miles, this gas pipeline will provide many benefits for North Carolina communities, such as lower costs, new jobs, and less pollution, according to Duke Energy.

Emanuel saw that the pipeline route went right through Lumbee territory, which could mean devastating effects for the community, such as health impacts and declining property values.

Proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline route (photo by SAS Blogs)

The crux of the issue lay in the negligence of project developers who failed to connect with the marginalized communities the pipeline would run through (such as the Lumbee). Tribal voices and input were completely ignored.

Emanuel helped prepare tribal leaders for meetings with corporate representatives and wrote a commentary on the need for the federal government to collaborate with the tribes they would be affecting.

Eventually, after years of lawsuits, the companies in charge of the project abandoned the ACP project. When I searched “Why was the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project canceled?” Duke Energy claimed the cancellation was because of “ongoing delays and increasing cost uncertainty, which threaten(ed) the economic viability of the project.” Other sources provide details on the legal challenges and criticism the project faced.

After the companies dropped the plan, they were quick to purchase forest land near the Lumbee tribe and begin the development of natural gas infrastructures that would allow for the storage of gas when the demand was low and the ability to release the gas when prices went up.

I found it quite impressive that Ryan was able to attend many meetings between the Lumbee Tribe and the company, without saying a word. The tribal council had asked him to only observe and not speak. During one meeting, a representative from the company that purchased the forest land said that they wanted to clarify that “pipelines are not disproportionately located in marginalized communities — they are everywhere.”

Emanuel began testing this hypothesis, eventually gathering enough evidence to statistically prove that there is a “spatial correlation between social vulnerability and pipeline density.” His findings gathered significant media attention and have even been expanded on to show the need for change and increased safety within pipeline communities.

Emanuel concluded by explaining that the principles of environmental justice can show us what questions we should be asking, who we should be asking them of, and who we should be keeping in mind when conducting research.

The statement Emanuel made that stuck with me the most was, “If we value examining problems from all angles, we have to pay attention to which perspectives are missing.”

Ryan Emanuel’s book (photo by The Magazine of the Sierra Club)

After Emanuel’s talk, I was surprised that I had never been introduced to this way of thinking before. It seems like common knowledge that focusing on justice and equity can improve how we investigate problems scientifically. However, it is not completely surprising that this information is not common sense, given the systematic issues within our country.

Emanuel’s book, “On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice,” dives deeper into these concepts about the relationship between environmental justice and environmental science. I believe this book would bring nuance to our world today, where there is a clear need for change and the uplifting of voices that have been quieted for so long.

By Sarah Pusser Class of 2028

Carrying on Dr. King’s Legacy: The Fight for Equity in Obesity Treatment

By Skylar Hughes

On January 22, 2024

In Biomedical Engineering, Faculty, Lecture, Medicine

“Of all the forms of inequality” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said in a 1966 press conference, “injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhumane.”

In honor of King’s impact on public health, Duke’s dean of Trinity College Dr. Gary G. Bennett delivered a powerful address Jan. 12 at the Trent Semans Center. Entitled ‘You have to Keep Moving Forward: Obesity in High-Risk Populations,’ Bennett discussed America’s Obesity Epidemic, and its disproportionate effects on Black women.

“More than 40% of the American population has obesity,” Bennett began. Incidence rates among Black women are the highest and have been since the epidemic began in 1955. “These disparities have not closed, and in many cases, they’ve widened over the years,” Bennett said.

Type two diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease are just some of the health risks associated with obesity. Compared to other racial groups, Black women are more likely to suffer from these conditions, as well as die from their effects. Furthermore, it appears that the efficacy of treatment options is significantly lower for patients of African descent.

But why do such disparities exist in the first place? According to Bennett, they can be attributed to a range of internal and external factors. “There certainly are physiological variations that are worth noting here, which is perhaps a challenge in all of obesity research.”

Research published in the journal Nature in 2022 found that, while there are different forms of obesity, that have shared ‘genetic and biological underpinnings.’ Environmental factors are also driving disparities. Black women are “exposed to more obesogenic environments, food desserts,” Bennett explained. With limited access to affordable and nutritious food, options for healthy eating are slim.

But perhaps most interestingly, Black women also have a range of sociocultural factors at play. “There are fewer within-group social pressures to lose weight,” Bennett maintained. Other sociocultural factors include higher body image satisfaction and higher weight misperception. “This is problematic in some ways,” he continued. While it protects against certain eating disorders and low self-esteem, “It does challenge your ability to achieve weight loss.”

For Black women, obesity is a complex public health issue that needs to be addressed.

But how? From medication to surgery, there are myriad potential treatment options. According to Bennett, however, the real key is lifestyle intervention. “It really is the foundation.” Comprised of three parts: reduced calorie diet, physical activity, and self-monitoring, lifestyle intervention is able to reach the widest range of participants.

Like other treatment options, the lifestyle intervention route shows racial disparities in its outcomes. Because of this, Dr. Bennett’s work focuses on developing methods that are designed with Black patients in mind.

At the forefront of his research is a new online intervention called iOTA, which stands for Interactive Obesity Treatment Approach. “This is a digital obesity approach that we designed specifically for high-risk populations.” The platform personalizes weight loss goals and feedback, which assist in program retention.

In addition, participants are equipped with coaching support from trained medical professionals. “This IOTA approach does a bunch of things,” Bennett said. “It promotes weight loss and prevents weight gain, improves cardiometabolics,” along with a host of other physical benefits. Results also show a reduction in depressive symptoms and increased patient engagement. Truly incredible.

Scholars like Bennett have continued the fight for public health equity- a fight advocated for by Dr. King many years ago. For more information on Bennett and his work, you can visit his website here.

Written by Skylar Hughes | Class of 2025

Sharing a Love of Electrical Engineering With Her Students

By Guest Post

On January 11, 2024

In Artificial Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering, Engineering, Faculty, Guest Post

Note: Each year, we partner with Dr. Amy Sheck’s students at the North Carolina School of Science and Math to profile some unsung heroes of the Duke research community. This is the seventh of eight posts.

“As a young girl, I always knew I wanted to be a scientist,” Dr. Tania Roy shares as she sits in her Duke Engineering office located next to state-of-the-art research equipment.

The path to achieving her dream took her to many places and unique research opportunities. After completing her bachelor’s in India, she found herself pursuing further studies at universities in the United States, eventually receiving her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University.

Throughout these years Roy was able to explore and contribute to a variety of fields within electrical engineering, including energy-efficient electronics, two-dimensional materials, and neuromorphic computing, among others. But her deepest passion and commitment is to engage upcoming generations with electrical engineering research.

As an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering within Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, Tania Roy gets to do exactly that. She finds happiness in mentoring her passionate young students. They work on projects focused on various problems in fields such as Biomedical Engineering (BME) and Mechanical Engineering, but her special focus is Electrical Engineering.

Roy walks through the facilities carefully explaining the purpose of each piece of equipment when we run into one of her students. She explains how his project involves developing hardware for artificial intelligence, and the core idea of computer vision.

Roy in her previous lab at the University of Central Florida. (UCF photo)

Through sharing her passion for electrical engineering, Roy hopes to motivate and inspire a new generation.

“The field of electrical engineering is expected to experience immense growth in the future, especially with the recent trends in technological development,” she says, explaining that there needs to be more interest in the field of electrical engineering for the growth to meet demand.

The recent shortage of semiconductor chips for the industrial market is an example of this. It poses a crucial problem to the supply and demand of various products that rely on these fundamental components, Roy says. By increasing the interest of students, and therefore increasing the number of students pursuing electrical engineering, we can build a foundation for the advancement of technologies powering our society today, says Roy.

Coming with a strong background of research herself, she is well equipped for the role of advocate and mentor. She has worked with gallium nitride for high voltage breakdowns. This is when the insulation between two conductors or electrical components fails, allowing electrical current to flow through the insulation. This breakdown usually occurs when the voltage across the insulating material exceeds a certain threshold known as the breakdown voltage.

In electric vehicles, high breakdown voltage is crucial for several reasons related to the safety, performance, and efficiency of the vehicle’s electrical system, and Roy’s work directly impacts this. She has also conducted extensive research on 2D materials and their photovoltaic capabilities, and is currently working on developing brain-inspired computer architectures for machine learning algorithms. Similar to the work of her student, this research utilizes the structure of the human brain to model an architecture for AI, replicating the synapses and neural connections.

As passionate as she is about research, she shares that she used to love to go to art galleries and look at paintings, “I could do it for hours,” Roy says. Currently, if she is not actively pursuing her research, she enjoys spending time with her two young children.

“I hope to share my dream with this new generation,” Roy concludes.

Guest post by Sutharsika Kumar, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Class of 2024

Solving More Medical Device Challenges by Teaching Others How

By Guest Post

On December 28, 2023

In Biomedical Engineering, Faculty, Global Health, Medicine

Note: Each year, we partner with Dr. Amy Sheck’s students at the North Carolina School of Science and Math to profile some unsung heroes of the Duke research community. This is the third of eight posts.

Eric Richardson is a professor of the practice in Biomedical Engineering and founding director of Duke Design Health. His research and teaching centers around medical device design and innovation, with a focus on underserved communities.

Richardson has always had a strong desire to enhance people’s wellbeing. Growing up, he wanted to be a doctor, but during high school, he was drawn towards the creative and problem-solving aspects of engineering. After earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, he pivoted to biomedical engineering for graduate work. While pursuing his PhD degree, he developed a profound interest in cardiac devices.

Through technology, Richardson has been able to impact the lives of many. He first worked in industry as a Principal R&D Engineer at Medtronic, where he helped develop transcatheter heart valves that have now helped over a million patients. However, it was his love for teaching that brought him to academia. Over the past decade as a professor, his interests have shifted towards global health and helping underserved communities.

Richardson aims to design technology to fit the needs of people, and bridge the gap of “translation” between research and product development. During his time in industry, Richardson realized that the vast majority of medical device research doesn’t go anywhere in terms of helping patients.

“That point of translation… is really where most technology and research dies, so I really wanted to be at that end of it, trying to figure out that pipeline of getting research, getting technology, all the way into the clinic,” Richardson says. “I would argue that is probably the hardest step of the whole process is actually getting a product together, developing it, doing the clinical trials, and doing the manufacturing and regulatory steps.”

A prototype of Richardson’s latest device.

Through his teaching, Richardson emphasizes product design, interdisciplinary approaches, and industry-academia partnerships to best meet the needs of underserved communities. One of his favorite courses to teach is the Design Health Series, a four-course sequence that he was brought to Duke to develop. In this class, interdisciplinary teams of graduate students, ranging from medicine to business, work together to design medical devices. They learn how to identify problems in medicine, develop a solution, and translate that into an actual product.

Richardson also encourages engineers to look at the broader picture and tackle the right problems. According to Richardson, challenges in global and emerging markets often aren’t due to a particular device, but rather, a multilayered system of care, ranging from a patient’s experience within a clinic to a country’s whole healthcare system. From this vantage point, he believes it’s important for engineers to determine where to intervene in the system, where the need is greatest, and to consider any unintended consequences.

“I think that there is so much great talent in the world, so many exciting problems to go after. I wish and hope that people will think a little more carefully and deliberately about what problems they go after, and the consequences of the problems that they solve,” he says.

Richardson is currently working on an abdominal brace for Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) patients – people who feel lightheaded after standing up – that is currently in clinical trials. While he is always eager to tackle different projects, as an educator, he believes the most important part of academia is training the next generation of engineers.

“I can only do a couple projects a year, but I can teach a hundred students every year that can then themselves go and do great things.”

Guest Post by Arianna Lee, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Class of 2025.

Pioneering New Treatments in Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson’s Disease

By Guest Post

On December 26, 2023

In Biomedical Engineering, Faculty, Guest Post, Medicine, Neuroscience

Meet a star in the realm of academic medicine – Dr. Kyle Todd Mitchell!

A man who wears many hats – a neurologist with a passion for clinical care, an adventurous researcher, and an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Duke – Mitchell finds satisfaction in the variety of work, which keeps him “driven and up to date in all the different areas.”

Dr. Mitchell holds a deep brain stimulation device.

Dr. Mitchell’s educational journey is marked by excellence, including a fellowship at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, a Neurology Residency at Washington University School of Medicine, and an M.D. from the Medical College of Georgia. Beyond his professional accolades, he leads an active life, enjoying running, hiking, and family travels for rejuvenation.

Dr. Mitchell’s fascination with neurology ignited during his exposure to the field in medical school and residency. It was a transformative moment when he witnessed a patient struggling with symptoms experience a sudden and remarkable improvement through deep brain stimulation. This therapy involves the implantation of a small electrode in the brain, offering targeted stimulation to control symptoms and bringing relief to individuals grappling with the challenges of Parkinson’s Disease.

“You don’t see that often in medicine, almost like a light switch, things get better and that really hooked me,” he said. The mystery and complexity of the brain further captivated him. “Everything comes in as a bit of a mystery, I liked the challenge of how the brain is so complex that you can never master it.”

Dr. Mitchell’s research is on improving deep brain stimulation to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disorder, which entails a progressive cognitive decline with no cure. Current medications exhibit fluctuations, leading to tremors and stiffness as they wear off. Deep brain stimulation (DBS), FDA-approved for over 20 years, provides a promising alternative.

Dr. Mitchell’s work involves creating adaptive algorithms that allow the device to activate when needed and deactivate so it is almost “like a thermostat.” He envisions a future where biomarkers recorded from stimulators could predict specific neural patterns associated with Parkinson’s symptoms, triggering the device accordingly. Dr. Mitchell is optimistic, stating that the “technology is very investigational but very promising.”

A key aspect of Dr. Mitchell’s work is its interdisciplinary nature, involving engineers, neurosurgeons, and fellow neurologists. Each member of the team brings a unique expertise to the table, contributing to the collaborative effort required for success. Dr. Mitchell emphasizes, “None of us can do this on our own.”

Acknowledging the challenges they face, especially when dealing with human subjects, Dr. Mitchell underscores the importance of ensuring research has a high potential for success. However, the most rewarding aspect, according to him, is being able to improve the quality of life for patients and their families affected by debilitating diseases.

Dr. Mitchell has a mindset of constant improvement, emphasizing the improvement of current technologies and pushing the boundaries of innovation.

“It’s never just one clinical trial — we are always thinking how we can do this better,” he says.

The pursuit of excellence is not without its challenges, particularly when attempting to improve on already effective technologies. Dr. Mitchell juggles his hats of being an educator, caregiver, and researcher daily. So let us tip our own hats and be inspired by Dr. Mitchell’s unwavering dedication to positively impact the lives of those affected by neurological disorders.

Guest post by Amy Lei, North Carolina School of Science and Math, Class of 2025.

From Occupational Therapy to Stroke Research

By Guest Post

On December 20, 2023

In Behavior/Psychology, Faculty, Guest Post, Medicine, Visualization

Note: Each year, we partner with Dr. Amy Sheck’s students at the North Carolina School of Science and Math to profile some unsung heroes of the Duke research community. This is the first of 8 posts.

Dr. Kimberly Hreha’s journey to studying stroke patients was not a straightforward one, but it started very early.

“My mom was a special ed teacher, and so I would go into her class and volunteer. There was an occupational therapist I met and they really kind of drove my decision to become an occupational therapist.”

After earning a masters degree in occupational therapy, Hreha worked as an OT for 5 years and became fascinated by stroke survivors and ways to help them live their lives normally again. She was able to do this when she moved to the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation and began working with a neurologist to study spatial neglect.

Kimberly Hreha and her Prism Adaptation goggles.

“If a stroke happens in the right hemisphere of the brain, the person neglects the left side of space,” Hreha said. “Imagine yourself standing in a room, and I want you to describe to me what the space is. [You would say] Oh my dresser’s on the right side, my bed’s on the right, my picture frame’s on the right. And you would not tell me anything on the left.”

She further explained that this is not due to blindness in the left eye, the left eye usually can see just fine, it’s simply that the brain ignores the entire left side of space.

Hreha co-developed a solution and treatment for this issue. It uses a pair of goggles with modified lenses, to move you into left space. I got to try it out to see how it worked.

Hreha first had me touch my hand to my chest and then touch a pen she was holding. I did this easily without the goggles on. When I tried again with the goggles on, I completely missed and put my finger too far to the right. I kept trying to touch the pen with the goggles on until I had retrained my brain to touch it consistently. Next, she had me take the goggles off and try touching the pen again. I went to touch the pen, but I missed it because my finger went too far to the left!

Hreha explained to me that she had just gotten me into left space. In stroke patients with left spatial neglect, she told me, they could use the goggles to help train them to stop neglecting left space, helping them to vastly improve their lives.

The goggle therapy, formally called prism adaptation, is a simple treatment that is practiced for 20 minutes a day for 10 days. For this Hreha won the Young Investigator Award in Post-Acute Stroke Rehabilitation in 2018 for her contribution to stroke research. Seeing her passion for her treatment and her happiness to have created something that helps stroke patients was very gratifying for me.

Hreha is also working on finding a connection between stroke patients and dementia, something that she hopes will further help the stroke survivor community. This is a research project that is ongoing for her, and one that she hopes to gain valuable data analysis and research practices skills from.

Finally, she talked to me about her goals for the future. Hreha hopes to do a collaborative study with people at the low-vision clinic, get a grant for her prism adaptation research, and create a right brain stroke clinic at Duke to be able to do large scale research to help right brain stroke patients.

As a researcher, she still also finds time to keep up her OT practice, by working as an OT one full day each month. Keeping true to her love of helping others, she said, “That little part of that clinical time just reminds me why I’m doing the research I’m doing. And that when I’m doing the data work, it is, at the end of the day, about that person who is in front of me in the clinic.”

Guest Post by Prithu Kolar, Class of 2025, North Carolina School of Science and Math.

Inventors, Assemble: The Newest Gadgets Coming Out of Duke

By Michelle Li

On December 15, 2023

In Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, Faculty, Medicine, Science Communication & Education

What do a smart toilet, an analog film app, and metamaterial computer chips have in common? They were all invented at Duke!

The Office for Translation & Commercialization—which supports Duke innovators bringing new technologies to market—recently hosted its fifth annual Invented at Duke celebration. With nine featured inventors and 300 attendees, it was an energetic atmosphere to network and learn.

*Attendees mingle in Penn Pavilion. Credit: Brian Mullins Photography.*

When event organizer Fedor Kossakovski was selecting booths, the name of the game was diversity—from medicine to art, from graduate students to faculty. “Hopefully people feel like they see themselves in these [inventors] and it’s representative of Duke overall,” he said. Indeed, as I munched through my second Oreo bar from the snack table and made the rounds, this diversity became apparent. Here are just two of the inventions on display:

Guided Medical Solutions

The first thing you’ll notice at Jacob Peloquin’s booth is a massive rubber torso.

As he replaces a punctured layer of rubber skin with a shiny new one, Peloquin beckons us over to watch. Using his OptiSETT device, he demonstrates easy insertion and placement of a chest tube.

“Currently, the method that’s used is you make an incision, and then place your fingers through, and then take the tube and place that between your fingers,” Peloquin explained. This results in a dangerously large incision that cuts through fascia and muscle; in fact, one-third of these procedures currently end in complications.

Peloquin’s device is a trocar—a thin plastic cylinder with a pointed tip at one end and tubing coming out of the other. It includes a pressure-based feedback system that tells you exactly how deep to cut, avoiding damage to the lungs or liver, and a camera to aid placement. Once the device is inserted, the outer piece can be removed so only the tubing remains.

*Peloquin demonstrates his OptiSETT device. Credit: Brian Mullins Photography.*

Peloquin—a mechanical engineering graduate student—was originally approached by the surgeons behind OptiSETT to assist with 3D printing. “They needed help, so I kind of helped those initial prototypes, then we realized there might be a market for this,” he said. Now, as he finishes his doctorate, he has a plethora of opportunities to continue working on OptiSETT full-time—starting a company, partnering with the Department of Defense, and integrating machine learning to interpret the camera feed.

It’s amazing how much can change in a couple years, and how much good a rubber torso can do.

GRIP Display

This invention is for my fellow molecular biology enthusiasts—for the lovers of cells, genes, and proteins!

The theme of Victoria Goldenshtein’s booth is things that stick together. It features an adorable claw machine that grabs onto its stuffed animal targets, and a lime green plastic molecule that can grab DNA. Although the molecule looks complex, Goldenshtein says its function is straightforward. “This just serves as a glue between protein and the DNA [that encodes it].”

*Goldenshtein—a postdoctoral associate in biomedical engineering—uses her lime green molecular model to demonstrate GRIP’s function. Credit: Brian Mullins Photography.*

Goldenshtein applies this technology to an especially relevant class of proteins—antibodies. Antibodies are produced by the immune system to bind and neutralize foreign substances like disease. They can be leveraged to create drug therapies, but first we need to know which gene corresponds to which antibody and which disease. That’s where GRIP steps in.

“You would display an antibody and you would vary the antibody—a billion different variations—and attach each one to the system. This grabs the DNA,” Goldenshtein said.

Then, you mix these billions of antibody-DNA pairs with disease cells to see which one attaches. Once you’ve found the right one, the DNA is readily available to be amplified, making an army of the same disease-battling antibody. Goldenshtein says this method of high-throughput screening can be used to find a cancer cure.

Although GRIP be but small, its applications are mighty.

Explore Other Booths

Coprata: a smart toilet that tracks your digestive health
inSoma Bio: a polymer that aids soft-tissue reconstruction
Spoolyard: a platform for exploring digital footage with analog film techniques
FaunaLabs: smart watches for our furry friends
G1 Optics: a tonometer to automatically detect eye pressure
TheraSplice: precision RNA splicing to treat cancer
Neurophos: metamaterial photonics for powering ultra-fast AI computation

As I finished my last Oreo bar and prepared for the trek back to East Campus, I was presented with a parting gift—a leather notebook with “Inventor” embossed on the cover. “No pressure,” said the employee who was handing them out with a wink.

I thought about the unique and diverse people I’d met that night—an undergraduate working in the Co-Lab, an ECE graduate student, and even a librarian from UNC—and smiled. As long as we each keep imagining and scribbling in our notebooks, there’s no doubt we can invent something that changes the world.

Post by Michelle Li, Class of 2027