A multi-chambered, micro-scale channel built in the Lingchong You lab is used to observe bacterial responses to different antibiotic treatments and to understand how mixed populations of bacteria swap genes. These chambers are empty for clearer viewing. A single microfluidic chip would typically hold 12 of these channels, each with 40 chambers, allowing for high-throughput experimentation. (Photo courtesy of Hannah Meredith)
For those who study antibiotic resistance, a future where people die from infected cuts or the measles is not some horrible alternative universe but something that could very well be a reality soon. In 1998, the House of Lords in London gave a stark report proclaiming, “Antibiotic resistance threatens mankind with the prospect of a return to the pre-antibiotic era.” They were especially concerned with findings that indicated an increase in resistance to antibiotics that treated common but deadly diseases such as typhoid, dysentery and various strains of meningitis.
As hospitals use antibiotics at an unprecedented rate to treat patients, there has been an increase in the number of infections that are antibiotic-resistant. This leads to more patient deaths from infections that could have been treated with antibiotics 20 or 30 years ago.
Hannah Meredith is a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering
Hannah Meredith, a graduate student in Lingchong You’s lab at Duke, has been studying the phenomenon of altruistic cell death in bacteria, which is when a bacterial cell will self destruct, breaking down the antibiotics they’re faced with as well. This process not only protects its fellow bacteria, it creates bacteria selectively chosen to be more resistant to the antibacterial due to the fact that the only bacteria left will be the ones resistant to the antibacterial.
When I asked her why she believed why studying this was so critical, she immediately responded that, “Optimizing antibiotic regimens is imperative so that treatment outcomes are positive and negative side effects are minimized. Although doctors and researchers recognize the need to optimize treatments, no one has come up with a standard method to design the best antibiotic regimen, given a particular antibiotic and specific infecting bacteria.”
Given that most pharmaceutical companies have stopped researching new antibiotics, the solution Hannah Meredith wants to use is to change the antibiotic dosage and the time the dosage is administered so that the maximum amount of bacteria can be killed while not using an extraordinarily large amount of antibiotics.
Grace Xiong
Using computer modeling, she is able to predict when a strain is most susceptible to an antibacterial and what percentage of bacteria can be killed with a certain amount of antibacterial. Ultimately she hopes to model common strains of infections (she has started using samples from the VA hospital) and create a data base that hospitals can use to more effectively treat their patients and in turn, reduce the amount of antibiotic resistance present in hospitals by getting it right the first time.
How do scientific research and social commentary relate?
The answer became clear during my conversation with Rotem Ben-Shachar, a PhD candidate in the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics program at Duke, who is interested in understanding the infectious disease dynamics of dengue fever. But she’s also pondering the reasons why female scientists are leaving prestigious career paths.
Rotem Ben-Shachar is a PhD candidate in computational biology and bioinformatics.
Ben-Shachar, advised by Katia Koelle, is utilizing mathematical and statistical methods to research dengue, the most prevalent vector-bourne viral disease in the world. Dengue can be caused by any of the four serotype (related strains of viruses) transmitted by mosquitos. Early recognition of infection and subsequent treatment of dengue infection can significantly lower the risk of severe clinical outcomes. The mechanism of progression to severe dengue, however, are poorly understood.
Ben-Shachar’s dissertation focuses on how dengue causes severe disease. Prior to her research, there was no model of this means. Ben-Shachar has recently finished creating the first “simple target cell limited model” of the immune response trigger when the dengue virus infects the host cell. Her model is consistent with current knowledge of virological indicators that predict the onset of severe dengue. Now she wants to determine the model’s accuracy by statistically fitting it to recent serotype-specific viral load data from infected patients. Finally, she plans to investigate how dengue control strategies influence the evolution of virulent dengue virus such as dengue serotype 2 virus. Her work will offer crucial information about a virus that causes 390 million infections and 12,000 deaths annually (Source: WHO).
Ben-Shachar also examines the phenomenon termed “the leaky pipeline,” which refers to the continuous loss of women in STEM fields as they climb the career ladder. Ben-Shachar’s first experience of gender bias was during college when a male student declined to be her partner for an advanced mathematics project. Since then, she has become increasingly aware of gender discrimination and the confidence gap between male and female scientists. She began her focus on women in science during a writing workshop at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies.
Tingzhu Teresa Meng
In her recently published article in New Republic, “Women Don’t Stick with the Sciences. Here’s Why,” she details her interviews with female researchers at Duke and supports her interpretations with conclusions from previous studies. For instance, she explains that “the leaky pipeline” results from “a combination of social, cultural, and psychological factors” that all contribute to the confidence gap that “plagues female scientists.”
She believes that eliminating gender stereotypes can solve this problem. Ben-Shachar agrees that current efforts to engage girls in STEM are empowering girls and allowing them to view themselves as future scientists.
Thanks to our discussion, I have realized that scientific research and social commentary both strive to understand and solve major issues facing the world and both require skills such as careful observation, analysis and inquiry. Therefore, these seemingly unrelated interests have much in common.
Guest Post By Sheena Faherty, graduate student in Biology
How do our neurons discriminate between a punch to the face or a kiss on the cheek? Between something potentially harmful, and something pleasant?
A new study published this week in Current Biology offers an answer by describing a previously uncharacterized gene required for pain sensing.
This work comes out of Dan Tracey’s lab at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. They named the gene balboa in honor of fictional prizefighter Rocky Balboa and his iconic immunity to pain.
Float like a drosophila, sting like a …oh, never mind.
The researchers found that the balboa gene is only active in pain-sensing neurons and is required for detection of painful touch responses. Without it, neurons can’t distinguish between something harmful and something pleasant.
Does the ultimate prize of naming of the gene inspire any boxing matches between lab mates?
“In the fly community, we are allowed to have these creative gene names, so discussions about the decision on naming are more fun than argumentative,” Tracey says.
Tracey’s lab is concerned with sensory neurobiology, the study of how neurons transform cues from the surrounding environment to signals that can be interpreted by the brain. Ultimately, the lab group hopes to identify the underlying molecular mechanisms that are involved in our sense of touch.
Pugilistic fly artwork designed by Jason Wu, a neurobiology graduate student in Jorg Grandl’s lab
“It’s unclear what happens during that moment of touch sensation when sensory neurons detect and convert a touch stimulus into a nerve impulse,” said graduate student Stephanie Mauthner, who is the lead author on the Rocky paper. “It’s also ambiguous how nerves are capable of discriminating the threshold of touch intensity.”
Although the fruit fly has a relatively simple central nervous system, Tracey’s group uses it as model because it has many of the same neural circuits that the human brain has.
“[Our goal was to figure out] what molecular components are required for pain neurons to detect harsh touch responses and what is the mechanism for performing this task,” Mauthner said.
Using fluorescent cells, their study also shows that balboa interacts with another protein of the same family named pickpocket. They’re hopeful that this gene duo can be a potential target for pain medications that could discriminate between different sites of pain throughout the body.
Pain relievers such as aspirin or ibuprofen work broadly throughout the whole body—with no discrimination to where the pain is actually occurring. But, by working towards the exact molecular mechanism of pain signaling, genes like balboa and pickpocket are potential candidates for more targeted therapeutics.
Grad student Stephanie Mauthner hangs out with one of her many vials of flies (courtesy of Stephanie Mauthner)
CITATION: “Balboa Binds to Pickpocket In Vivo and Is Required for Mechanical Nociception in Drosophila Larvae,” Stephanie E. Mauthner, Richard Y. Hwang, Amanda H. Lewis, Qi Xiao, Asako Tsubouchi, Yu Wang, Ken Honjo, J.H. Pate Skene, Jörg Grandl, W. Daniel Tracey Jr. Current Biology, Dec. 15, 2014. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.038
A handful of bird species survived the K-T extinction. Chicken genomes have changed the least since that terrible day.
By Karl Leif Bates
In the beginning was the Chicken. Or something quite like it.
At that moment 66 million years ago when an asteroid impact caused the devastating Cretaceous–Tertiary (K-T) extinction, a handful of bird-like dinosaur species somehow managed to survive.
The cataclysm and its ensuing climate change wiped out much of Earth’s life and brought the dinosaurs’ 160-million-year reign to an end.
But this week, the genomes of modern birds are telling us that a few resourceful survivors somehow scratched out a living, reproduced (of course), and put forth heirs that evolved to adapt into all the ecological niches left vacant by the mass extinction. From that close call, birds blossomed into the more than 10,000 spectacularly diverse species we know today.
Erich Jarvis
Not all birds are descended from chickens, but it’s true that chicken genes have diverged the least from the dinosaur ancestors, says Erich Jarvis, an associate professor of neurobiology in the Duke Medical School and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
He’s one of the leaders on a gigantic release of scientific data and papers that tells the story of the plucky K-T survivors and their descendants, redrawing many parts of the bird family tree.
From giant, flightless ostriches to tiny, miraculous hummingbirds, the descendants of those proto-birds now rule over the skies, the forests, the cliff-faces and prairies and even under water. While other birds were learning to reproduce songs and sounds, hover to drink nectar, dive on prey at 230 miles per hour, run across the land at 40 miles per hour, migrate from pole to pole or spend months at sea out of sight of land, the chickens just abided, apparently.
Sweet little chickadees had a very big, very scary cousin. “Parrots and songbirds and hawks and eagles had a common ancestor that was an apex predator,” Erich Jarvis says. “We think it was related to these giant ‘terror birds’ that lived in the South American continent millions of years ago.”
The new analyses released this week are based on complete-genome sequencing done mostly at BGI (formerly Beijing Genomics Institute). and DNA samples prepared mostly at Duke. The budgerigar, a parrot, was sequenced at Duke. There are 29 papers in this first release, but many more will tumble out for years to come.
“In the past, people have been using 1, 2, up to 20 genes, to try to infer species relationships over the last 100 million years or so,” Jarvis says. But whole-genome analysis drew a somewhat different tree and yielded important new insights.
More than 200 researchers at 80 institutions dove into this sea of big data like so many cormorants and pelicans, coming up with new insights about how flight developed and was lost several times, how penguins learned to be cold and wet and fly underwater and how color vision and bright plumage co-evolved.
The birds’ genomes were found to be pared down to eliminate repetitive sequences of DNA, but yet to still hold microchromosomal structures that link them to the dinosaurs and crocodiles.
The sequencing of still more birds continues apace as the Jarvis lab at Duke does most of the sample preparation to turn specimens of bird flesh into purified DNA for whole-genome sequencing at BGI. (More after the movie!)
As one of three ring-leaders for this massive effort, Erich Jarvis is on 20 papers in this first set of findings. Eight of those concern the development of song learning and speech, but the other ones are pretty cool too:
Evidence for a single loss of mineralized teeth in the common avian ancestor. Robert W. Meredith, et al.Science. Instead of teeth, modern birds have a horny beak to grab and a muscular gizzard to “chew” their food. This analysis shows birds lost the use of five genes related to making enamel and dentin just once about 116 million years ago.
Complex evolutionary trajectories of sex chromosomes across bird taxa. Qi Zhou, et al. Science. The chromosomes that determine sex in birds, the W and the Z, have a very complex history and more active genes than had been expected. They may hold the secret to why some birds have wildly different male and female forms.
Three crocodilians genomes reveal ancestral patterns of evolution among archosaurs. Richard E Green, et al Science. Three members of the crocodile lineage were sequenced revealing ‘an exceptionally slow rate of genome evolution’ and a reconstruction of a partial genome of the common ancestor to all crocs, birds, and dinosaurs.
Evidence for GC-biased gene conversion as a driver of between-lineage differences in avian base composition. Claudia C. Weber, et al, Genome Biology. The substitution of the DNA basepairs G and C was found to be higher in the genomes of birds with large populations and shorter generations, confirming a theoretical prediction that GC content is affected by life history of a species.
Low frequency of paleoviral infiltration across the avian phylogeny.Jie Cui, et al. Genome Biology. Genomes maintain a partial record of the viruses an organism’s family has encountered through history. The researchers found that birds don’t hold as much of these leftover bits of viral genes as other animals. They conclude birds are either less susceptible to viral infection, or better at purging viral genes.
Genomic signatures of near-extinction and rebirth of the Crested Ibis and other endangered bird species. Shengbin Li, et al Genome Biology. Genomes of several bird species that are recovering from near-extinction show clues to the susceptibilities to climate change, agrochemicals and overhunting that put them in peril. This effort has created better information for improving conservation and breeding these species back to health.
Dynamic evolution of the alpha (α) and beta (β) keratins has accompanied integument diversification and the adaptation of birds into novel lifestyles. Matthew J. Greenwold, et al. BMC Evolutionary Biology. Keratin, the structural protein that makes hair, fingernails and skin in mammals, also makes feathers. Beta-keratin genes have undergone widespread evolution to account for the many forms of feathers and claws among birds.
Comparative genomics reveals molecular features unique to the songbird lineage. Morgan Wirthlin, et al. BMC Genomics. Analysis of 48 complete bird genomes and 4 non-bird genomes identified 10 genes unique to the songbirds, which account for almost half of bird species today. Two of the genes are more active in the vocal learning centers of the songbird brain.
Reconstruction of gross avian genome structure, organization and evolution suggests that the chicken lineage most closely resembles the dinosaur avian ancestor. Michael N. Romanov, et al. BMC Biology. Of 21 bird species analyzed, the chicken lineage appears to have undergone the fewest changes compared to the dinosaur ancestor.
Two Antarctic penguin genomes reveal insights into their evolutionary history and molecular changes related to the cold aquatic environment. Cai Li, et al. Gigascience. The first penguins appeared 60 million years ago during a period of global warming. Comparisons of two Antarctic species show differences and commonalities in gene adaptations for extreme cold and underwater swimming.
Evolutionary genomics and adaptive evolution of the hedgehog gene family (SHH, IHH, and DHH) in vertebrates. Joana Pereira, et al. PLoS ONE. Whole-genome sequences for 45 bird species and 3 non-bird species allow a more detailed tracing of the evolutionary history of three genes important to embryo development.
A Duke lab led the effort to isolate bird DNA for sequencing at BGI: (L-R) Erich Jarvis, associate professor of neurobiology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, lab research analyst Carole Parent, undergraduate research assistant Nisarg Dabhi, and research scientist Jason Howard. (Duke Photo, Les Todd)
200+ clamor for info about summer research opportunities
By: Thabit Pulak
Dr. Grunwald discussing research opportunities at the Summer Research Programs event
“What are you doing this summer?”
Whether it is coming from a concerned parent, or just a friend, this is a question that makes most of us anxious. What can I do this summer? Well, you can kick off your sandals and relax by the seashore. Or you can take a road trip across the country with your friends. Or go backpacking in Europe. Or sleep for 10 hours a day, and watch some extra… Oh, did you have something else in mind? I suppose there’s always some exciting summer research opportunities 🙂
When an info session titled “Summer Research Opportunities” popped up in one of my emails. I thought it would be pretty interesting, so I decided to attend. As I made my way to Perkins 217, I saw a flood of people trying to enter at the same time as myself. The room had capacity to seat at least 200 people, and not only was it filled, but some people had to sit on the floor. This must have some pretty exclusive stuff, I thought. It was like Black Friday, except it was for people trying to get to a stack of handouts near the entrance of the room, which had a list of the summer opportunities (if you weren’t there never fear, here is a link!)
Duke BioCoRE Scholars: The Duke Biosciences Collaborative for Research Engagement sponsors a summer research program for rising sophomores who are interested in pursuing a research-oriented career in the future. Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t necessarily for those serious about doing medicine. More info at http://sites.duke.edu/biocore/
These programs are just a few of the opportunities that are available. Good luck in your summer research hunt!
So now you are at Duke — one of the world’s best research universities — but now what? You might be taking cool classes, but how can you take advantage of the world-class research happening here? Roughly 50 percent of Duke undergrads do so at some point. Getting involved in research as a freshman might sound intimidating (I know it did to me!), but a little luck and perseverance can get you off to a strong start.
Alan working in Dr. Eroglu’s laboratory.
I had the opportunity to talk with Duke freshman Alan Kong about his experiences trying to get into research labs, and how he successfully ended up finding one to join. Alan is considering majoring in biology whilst on the premed track.
He initially started to look into labs within a month of starting classes at Duke. He spent about two months sending out emails to professors who were working on interesting projects.
“It was a very frustrating search, and initially difficult. I emailed five professors, and emailed each many times,” Alan said. “But perseverance ultimately paid off.”
Alan now works in the lab of Dr. Eroglu who is an assistant professor of cell biology, associated with the Duke School of Medicine. According to the Duke Institute of Brain Science website description, Eroglu’s laboratory “is interested in understanding how central nervous system (CNS) synapses are formed.”
Alan was also accepted into two others labs, but ultimately felt Dr. Eroglu was the best fit. “I picked Eroglu because her research was very interesting, and relevant to my interests,” Alan says. “I felt I could learn more interesting techniques in research, such as working with live animals.”
Now, Alan has been working in Dr. Eroglu’s lab for a month. When I asked him how it was going, with a smile he exclaimed, “It’s great!”
“Right now I am learning techniques such as genotyping, western blot. I even took out the retina of a rat!” Alan said. “I am learning the ropes of the lab, and my mentor said that down the road, if I learn properly, I can eventually work on my own independent project!”
When asked for any advice for other students thinking of getting into research, Alan said “Persistence is key — don’t give up! It’s a difficult process; don’t let small things get in the way. Keep trying until you find one.”
Tech lovers pull all-night codefest for social good, Nov. 15-16, 2014
More than 500 students converged on Duke’s Fitzpatrick Center for an unusual all-nighter this weekend. No term papers, no problem sets. Their mission: to collaborate on software or hardware projects related to social good. The students were participating in “HackDuke,” the third in a series of 24-hour hackathons held at Duke since 2013.
To some, “hacking” conjures up images of breaking into bank accounts. But these tech-savvy students are no cyber criminals. The event, dubbed “Code for Good,” challenged them to work in teams to propose tech solutions to problems in any one of four themes — poverty and inequality, health and wellness, education and energy and environment.
No experience? No problem
The hacking got rolling around 2 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 15. Armed with laptops and Ethernet cables, the students fanned out across three floors of the Fitzpatrick Center atrium and got to work. First-time hackers and novice programmers were welcome. Roughly half of this year’s participants were from Duke, and half were from other universities across the United States and Canada. More than 20 percent of the participants were women.
A caffeine- and sugar-fueled coding frenzy
The hackers worked non-stop for 24 hours, many with little sleep and no showers. Vast quantities of caffeine and sugar helped. Back by popular demand, after 10 p.m. the CIEMAS basement became a foam-filled battlefield for hackers in need of a nerf gun break:
Day 2
Bleary-eyed hackers started presenting their solutions to the judges around 12:30 p.m. on Sunday. One team developed a cloud-based temperature sensor for monitoring premature newborns who are born at home and can’t make it to a clinic. Another team developed an app called “Ananda,” or bliss,which measures the relationship between a range of personal habits and a person’s self-reported happiness score. The winning team from each track received a $750 donation in their name to the nonprofit of their choice. Judge and IBM Program Director Ginny Ghezzo tweeted her favorites:
“Hey, I ran one of those tests in my lab!” Zach whispered to me during biology lecture. I give him a sideways look, because I definitely didn’t recall running a Southern blot in our assigned lab section. But then I realized that he was referring to the lab that he works in on campus.
Zachary Visco presenting research at the Duke Cancer Institute Annual Retreat
Zachary Visco is a sophomore biomedical engineering major on the pre-health track. After hours of hunting through job listings and emailing lab managers, he finally landed a position of working in an ovarian cancer research lab on campus led by Dr. Susan Murphy and Dr. Andrew Berchuck this past summer.
Having only a year of undergraduate education under his belt, he found some of the concepts and techniques in his new job over his head.
“I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t have any lab experience, but my boss, Dr. Zhiqing Huang, was very patient and walked me through everything,” Zach explained.
As Zach gained more experience in the lab, he started performing more experiments and gaining more responsibility. He would typically perform experiments that ranged from Western Blots, to cDNA preps, to real-time PCR. He was started to gain knowledge of how the pieces worked, but didn’t understand everything behind the science. However, Zach found in his class lectures, he was actually learning about concepts that pertained to his lab.
“Biology has helped explain some of the terminology and processes performed in lab, and organic chemistry has helped explain how and why some of the reactions occur,” he said.
For instance, he learned about the significance of cDNA and the information that can be determined from it. In his lab, he learned that running cDNA preps involved transcribing cDNA from mature RNA in order to perform a real-time PCR. In biology lecture, he learned why his lab would use cDNA instead of normal template DNA because mature RNA only expresses the exon, or the actual genes in our DNA, therefore the cDNA would only express the genes as well.
“I had hoped that I would eventually gain an understanding of the lab work during my undergrad, but when I first started, it all seemed very overwhelming,” Zach said. “I was pleasantly surprised when I found that I could actually apply knowledge from my classes to my work. It made it seem like I was finally learning material that could pertain to my career, not just trying to pass a weed-out class.”
Zach has found that working in the lab and the material taught in his classes has influenced his career path more than he realized. He had previously only imagined himself working in clinic-based research, but is now considering a path in lab-based research.
“I find lab research very interesting because it’s like a puzzle and you are trying to figure out the pieces as you go.”
Grad school can seem like walking down a well-lit path in an otherwise dark forest. It’s easy to see the academic path, but who knows what might happen if you step off of it? (Illustration: Ted Stanek)
Guest post from Ted Stanek, PhD candidate in neurobiology
The Duke Institute for Brain Sciences’ Beyond Academia panel on Oct. 30 tried to illuminate the many career paths available to PhDs and spread hope rather than dread in the minds of Triangle area graduate students.
There has been a flood of articles recently about the increase in competition in the academic world for tenure-track faculty positions and federal funding. They all harped on the perils of staying in academia and the tragedy of being a PhD student or postdoc in such a climate.
Many of these stories focus on the terrifying choice that all PhDs and postdocs face at various points in their career: whether or not they want to stay on the academic track. The alternative feels like jumping off of a cliff, and many people complain that programs which accept more PhD students than there are academic jobs available are effectively pushing students towards that cliff.
Ted Stanek is a PhD student in neurobiology.
In the face of this negative outlook for PhDs, the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences recently provided welcome insight into the variety of non-academic careers that may lie in a PhD’s future. Beyond Academia was a day-long workshop consisting of five groups of 3-4 panelists discussing their own career trajectories, what their careers are like, and how they prepared to achieve such positions. Each panelist had a neuroscience or biomedical science PhD, and each had found a successful and fulfilling career outside of the academic niche.
“There are no ‘alternative careers’,” Katja Brose, Senior Editor of Neuron, emphasized in her keynote address. “There are just careers.”
Workshop panelists revealed just how many careers were available to PhDs. A major point reinforced during the event was that you are never “stuck” on the academic track. You have the option of changing careers every step of the way – even after you’ve reached the level of tenured faculty.
Switching career paths, however, is a daunting task – a common reason why many PhD students go straight into a postdoc. It’s easy to see how the skills that you learn as a graduate student will transfer to skills you can use as a postdoc, and then as a young faculty.
Elizabeth Brannon, a professor of psychology & neuroscience who organized the seminar, pointed out in her welcoming speech that PhD students have limited access to professionals outside of academia, making it difficult to even identify non-academic careers that may interest them, let alone prepare for them.
While many of these careers beyond academia do require some type of preparation, this preparation may simply consist of pursuing your interests while completing your PhD. Writing or editing for your lab, starting up a journal club, and participating in university or professional organizations are all great ways to boost your resume and develop your interests.
Perhaps the hardest part of preparing for any career, academic or otherwise, is undergoing that initial period of self-reflection necessary to identify what skills you possess in your current position, what interests you about your job, and how your life values might impact your career.
“The point at which your skills, interests, and values overlap determines your career sweet spot,” Brose said.
Do you especially enjoy the administrative aspects of academia? Maybe grant management is the way to go. How about actually conducting experiments to discover new biological mechanisms? Perhaps working in a pre-clinical lab for a pharmaceutical company is the place for you. What if you love writing – either the spinning of a story (science writer/freelancer), or writing down the scientific facts with precise and accurate language (medical writer)? Are you interested in new biological technology (intellectual property and patent law)? Or helping to change laws about science (science policy)? Maybe you just love reading papers and debating where they should be published (journal editor).
All of these positions highly value PhDs in particular, no matter what the specifics of your thesis are. Every PhD in the brain and behavioral sciences, whether molecular, systems, or behavioral, develops what career advisors call transferable skills. These highly valued “super powers” as one panelist put it, include being able to communicate technical topics to a diverse audience, working with team members, learning a large amount of information quickly and effectively, being resilient in the face of unexpected adversity, and thinking critically to solve complex problems. The overwhelming message from Beyond Academia was that no matter where you end up, after you get your PhD you can find a career that will make you happy and fulfilled.
To me, it seems like pursuing a PhD is a lot like walking down a well-lit path in an otherwise dark forest. It’s easy to see the next step along the path to academia, but who knows what might happen if you step off of it?
Thanks to Beyond Academia, that forest is now a little brighter.
Howdy everyone! My name is Thabit Pulak, and I am currently a freshman, hailing from the grand nation of Texas! Although I haven’t declared my major yet, I am interested in Public Policy, and Medicine.
My first batch of custom-made water filters, fresh from the manufacturing plant in Bangladesh!
I’ve been interested in science ever since I was really young. As I got older, I became more aware of my surroundings. Ethnically, I am from Bangladesh, which is a poverty-stricken nation. Amongst the many problems the country faces, one that personally caught my eye was that of arsenic water poisoning, which affects nearly 70 million people in Bangladesh, and about 300 million people across the world. Continually drinking arsenic-tainted water results in arsenicosis, which is a chronic state of arsenic poisoning that gradually develops into various types of bodily cancers. So I thought, if exposure to arsenic was reduced, then the incidence of cancer would decrease as well.
Studying the issue closer, I noticed that solutions for filtering arsenic from water did exist, but they were very expensive (nearly $70) for the average villager, who makes around $1 a day. This was definitely a problem, as what good use was a solution, which was financially inaccessible to the target audience?
My meeting with the Minister of Bangladesh
I started to delve into this problem, trying to figure out what I could do. I read research articles on how other filters on the market worked. I noticed that the technologies used in other filters were plagued with various problems that brought cost up, such as being patented, or technologies not available natively in Bangladesh. Working in the kitchen of my home in Texas, I slowly developed an arsenic water filter that could also filter bacteria from water at an affordable price. I designed my filter in such a way that the whole filter could theoretically be built using materials in a typical village home.
Throughout the process of working on this project, I had the privilege of meeting many people who supported me along the way. I met with Bob Perciaspe, who at the time, was the head administrator of the EPA. I also met with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who lent me his endorsement towards carrying on with my work, with the future focus of expanding into rural areas into Texas, which also include arsenic affected regions. And, to my huge surprise, I was invited to the White House and met with President Obama!
I am now working on implementing my design. I founded iKormi, a non-profit organization, with the goal of alleviating problems faced by the underprivileged, in which my primary focus was arsenic water poisoning. Using some grants and money I raised, I was able to start up a small water filter plant in Bangladesh which manufactures arsenic water filters according to my design, consisting completely of local materials, using local labor. The filters were being built at a tenth of the cost. In addition to the manufacturing process, I also was able to gain support of many influential people in Bangladesh, including the Minister (and former general secretary) of Bangladesh. While there is definitely a lot more work to do, I definitely look forward to expanding this operation to be able to serve a wide variety of people who need access to clean drinking water.
At Duke, I hope to continue with my work in Bangladesh through the wealth of opportunities available to students in terms of research and working abroad. I look forward to writing for the Duke Research Blog!
Me and President Obama in one of the Bangladesh national newspapers!
