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What is it like to Direct a Large, Externally-Funded Research Center?

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On January 30, 2023

In Artificial Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Faculty, Science Communication & Education

What are the trials and tribulations one can expect? And conversely, what are the highlights? To answer these questions, Duke Research & Innovation Week kicked off with a panel discussion on Monday, January 23.

The panel

Moderated by George A. Truskey, Ph.D, the Associate Vice President for Research & Innovation and a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the panelists included…

  • Claudia K. Gunsch, Ph.D., a professor in the Departments of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Environmental Science & Policy. Dr. Gunsch is the director of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr) and is also the Associate Dean for Duke Engineering Research & Infrastructure.
Dr. Claudia Gunsch
  • Yiran Chen, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Dr. Chen is the director of the NSF AI Institute for Edge Computing (Athena).
Dr. Yiran Chen
  • Stephen Craig, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Chemistry. Dr. Craig is the director of the Center for the Chemistry of Molecularly Optimized Networks (MONET).
Dr. Stephen Craig

The centers

As the panelists joked, a catchy acronym for a research center is almost an unspoken requirement. Case in point: PreMiEr, Athena, and MONET were the centers discussed on Monday. As evidenced by the diversity of research explored by the three centers, large externally-funded centers run the gamut of academic fields.

PreMiEr, which is led by Gunsch, is looking to answer the question of microbiome acquisition. Globally, inflammatory diseases are connected to the microbiome, and studies suggest that our built environment is the problem, given that Americans spend on average less than 8% of time outdoors. It’s atypical for an Engineering Research Center (ERC) to be concentrated in one state but uniquely, PreMieR is. The center is a joint venture between Duke University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina – Charlotte.

PreMiEr – not to be confused with the English Premier League

Dr. Chen’s Athena is the first funded AI institute for edge computing. Edge computing is all about improving a computer’s ability to process data faster and at greater volumes by processing data closer to where it’s being generated. AI is a relatively new branch of research, but it is growing in prevalence and in funding. In 2020, 7 institutes looking at AI were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), with total funding equaling 140 million. By 2021, 11 institutes were funded at 220 million – including Athena. All of these institutes span over 48 U.S states.

Athena, or the Greek goddess of wisdom, is a fitting name for a research center

MONET is innovating in polymer chemistry with Stephen Craig leading. Conceptualizing polymers as operating in a network, the center aims to connect the behaviors of a single chemical molecule in that network to the  behavior of the network as a whole. The goal of the center is to transform polymer and materials chemistry by “developing the knowledge and methods to enable molecular-level, chemical control of polymer network properties for the betterment of humankind.” The center has nine partner institutions in the U.S and one internationally.

MONET, like French painter Claude Monet

Key takeaways

Research that matters

Dr. Gunsch talked at length about how PreMiEr aspires to pursue convergent research. She describes this as identifying a large, societal challenge, then determining what individual fields can “converge” to solve the problem.

Because these centers aspire to solve large, societal problems, market research and industry involvement is common and often required in the form of an industry advisory group. At PreMiEr, the advisory group performs market analyses to assess the relevance and importance of their research. Dr. Chen also remarked that there is an advisory group at Athena, and in addition to academic institutions the center also boasts collaborators in the form of companies like Microsoft, Motorola, and AT&T.

Dr. Chen presenting on Athena’s partner institutions at Monday’s talk.

Commonalities in structure

Most research centers, like PreMiEr, Athena, and MONET, organize their work around pillars or “thrusts.” This can help to make research goals understandable to a lay audience but also clarifies the purpose of these centers to the NSF, other funding bodies, host and collaborating institutions, and the researchers themselves.

How exactly these goals are organized and presented is up to the center in question. For example, MONET conceptualizes its vision into three fronts – “fundamental chemical advances,” “conceptual advances,” and “technological advances.”

At Athena, the research is organized into four “thrusts” – “AI for Edge Computing,” “AI-Powered Computer Systems,” “AI-Powered Networking Systems,” and “AI-Enabled Services and Applications.”

Meanwhile, at PreMiEr, the three “thrusts” have a more procedural slant. The first “thrust” is “Measure,” involving the development of tracking tools and the exploration of microbial “dark matter.” Then there’s “Modify,” or the modification of target delivery methods based on measurements. Finally, “Modeling” involves predictive microbiome monitoring to generate models that can help analyze built environment microbiomes.  

A center is about the people  

“Collaborators who change what you can do are a gift. Collaborators who change how you think are a blessing.”

Dr. stephen craig

All three panelists emphasized that their centers would be nowhere without the people that make the work possible. But of course, humans complicate every equation, and when working with a team, it is important to anticipate and address tensions that may arise.

Dr. Craig spoke to the fact that successful people are also busy people, so what may be one person’s highest priority may not necessarily be another person’s priority. This makes it important to assemble a team of researchers that are united in a common vision. But, if you choose wisely, it’s worth it. As Dr. Craig quipped on one of his slides, “Collaborators who change what you can do are a gift. Collaborators who change how you think are a blessing.”

In academia, there is a loud push for diversity, and research centers are no exception. Dr. Chen spoke about Athena’s goals to continue to increase their proportions of female and underrepresented minority (URM) researchers. At PreMiEr, comprised of 42 scholars, the ratio of non-URM to URM researchers is 83-17, and the ratio of male to female researchers is approximately 50-50.

In conclusion, cutting-edge research is often equal parts thrilling and mundane, as the realities of applying for funding, organizing manpower, pushing through failures, and working out tensions with others sets in. But the opportunity to receive funding in order to start and run an externally-funded center is the chance to put together some of the brightest minds to solve some of the most pressing problems the world faces. And this imperative is summarized well by the words of Dr. Craig: “Remember: if you get it, you have to do it!”

Post by Megna Datta, Class of 2023

Student Researchers Share What They Know About AI and Health

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On December 8, 2022

In Artificial Intelligence, Data, Medicine, Students

The healthcare industry and academic medicine are excited about the potential for artificial intelligence — really clever computers — to make our care better and more efficient.

The students from Duke’s Health Data Science (HDS) and AI Health Data Science Fellowship who presented their work at the 2022 Duke AI Health Poster Showcase on Dec. 6 did an excellent job explaining their research findings to someone like me, who knows very little about artificial intelligence and how it works. Here’s what I learned:

Artificial intelligence is a way of training computer systems to complete complex tasks that ordinarily require human thinking, like visual categorization, language translation, and decision-making. Several different forms of artificial intelligence were presented that do healthcare-related things like sorting images of kidney cells, measuring the angles of a joint, or classifying brain injury in CT scans.

Talking to the researchers made it clear that this technology is mainly intended to be supplemental to experts by saving them time or providing clinical decision support.

Meet Researcher Akhil Ambekar

Akhil standing next to his poster “Glomerular Segmentation and Classification Pipeline Using NEPTUNE Whole Slide Images”

Akhil Ambekar and team developed a pipeline to automate the classification of glomerulosclerosis, or scarring of the filtering part of the kidneys, using microscopic biopsy images. Conventionally, this kind of classification is done by a pathologist. It is time-consuming and limited in terms of accuracy and reproducibility of observations. This AI model was trained by providing it with many questions and corresponding answers so that it could learn how to correctly answer questions. A real pathologist oversaw this work, ensuring that the computer’s training was accurate.

Akil’s findings suggest that this is a feasible approach for machine classification of glomerulosclerosis. I asked him how this research might be used in medicine and learned that a program like this could save expert pathologists a lot of time.

What was Akhil’s favorite part of this project? Engaging in research, experimenting with Python and running different models, trying to find what works best.

Meet Researcher Irene Tanner

Irene Tanner and her poster, “Developing a Deep Learning Pipeline to Measure the Hip-Knee-Ankle Angle in Full Leg Radiographs”

The research Irene Tanner and her team have done aims to develop a deep learning-based pipeline to calculate hip-knee-ankle angles from full leg x-rays. This work is currently in progress, but preliminary results suggest the model can precisely identify points needed to calculate the angles of hip to knee to ankle. In the future, this algorithm could be applied to predict outcomes like pain and physical function after a patient has a joint replacement surgery.

What was Irene’s favorite part of this project? Developing a relationship with mentor, Dr. Maggie Horn, who she said provided endless support whenever help was needed.

Meet Researcher Brian Lerner

Brian Lerner and his poster, “Using Deep Learning to Classify Traumatic Brain Injury in CT Scans”

Brian Lerner and his team investigated the application of deep learning to standardize and sharpen diagnoses of traumatic brain injury (TBI) from Computerized Tomography (CT) scans of the brain. Preliminary findings suggest that the model used (simple slice) is likely not sufficient to capture the patterns in the data. However, future directions for this work might examine how the model could be improved. Through this project, Brian had the opportunity to shadow a neurologist in the ER and speculated upon many possibilities for the use of this research in the field.

What was Brian’s favorite part of this project? Shadowing neurosurgeon Dr. Syed Adil at Duke Hospital and learning what the real-world needs for this science are.

Many congratulations to all who presented at this year’s AI Health Poster Showcase, including the many not featured in this article. A big thanks for helping me to learn about how AI Health research might be transformative in answering difficult problems in medicine and population health.

By Victoria Wilson, Class of 2023

COVID and Our Education

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On November 28, 2022

In Biology, Global Health, Lecture, Science Communication & Education

With mask mandates being overturned and numerous places going back to “normal,” COVID is becoming more of a subconscious thought. Now, this is not a true statement for the entire population, since there are people who are looking at the effects of the pandemic and the virus itself.

I attended a poster presentation for the “The Pandemic Divide” event hosted here at Duke by the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity. To me, all the poster boards conveyed the theme of how COVID-19 had affected our lives in more ways than just our health. One connection that particularly caught my eye would be the one between American Education and COVID.

The poster for the conference

As a student who lived through COVID while attending high school, I can safely say that the pandemic has affected education. However, based on the posters I saw, it is important to know that education, too, has a strong and impactful impact on COVID-19.

Dr. Donald J. Alcendor after a great presentation

The first evidence I saw was from Donald J. Alcendor, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Meharry Medical College in Nashville. His poster was about the hesitancy surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. One way he and his team figured out to lessen the hesitance from the public was to improve the public’s trust. To achieve this, Alcendor and his team sent trusted messengers into the community. One of the types of messengers they provided was scientists who studied COVID-19. These scientists were able to bring factual information about the disease, how it spreads, and the best course of action to act against it. Alcendor and his research team also brought in “vaccine ambassadors” to the community and a mobile unit to help give the community vaccines. He noted that this was accomplished with support from the Bloomberg Foundation’s Greenwood Initiative, which addresses Black health issues.

With this mobile unit, Alcendor and his team were able to reach people and help those who were otherwise unable to receive help for themselves because of their lack of transportation. They provided people from all backgrounds with help and valuable information.

Alcindor said he and his team planned pop-up events based on where the community they were trying to reach congregates. With the African American community, he planned pop-up events at churches and schools. Then for the Latino community, he planned pop-events where families tend to gather, and he held events in Latin0 neighborhoods. In addition, he made sure that the information was available in Spanish at all levels, from the flyers and the surveys, to the vaccinators themselves.

All of these amenities that he and his group provided were able to educate the community about COVID-19 and improve their trust in the scientists working on the disease. Alcendor and his team were able to impact COVID-19 through education, and by going to the event, it was evident to me that he was not the only one who accomplished this.

Dr. Colin Cannonier and his poster

Colin Cannonier, an associate professor of economics at Belmont University in Nashville, asked and answered the question, “does education have an impact on COVID? Specifically, does it change health and wellbeing?” To answer this question, he researched how education about COVID can affect a person. He discovered that when a person is more educated about COVID, how it is spread, and its symptoms, they are more likely to keep the pandemic in check through their behavior. He came to this conclusion because he realized that when higher educated people know more about COVID, they exhibit behaviors to remain healthy, meaning that they would follow the health protocols given by the health officials.

While this may seem like common sense that the more educated a person is, the more they make smart choices pertaining to COVID, this shows how important education is and how deadly ignorance is. Cannonier’s research gave tangible evidence to show that education is a weapon against diseases. Unfortunately, it is evident that some officials did not believe in educating the public about the virus or the virus itself, and that proved to be extremely deadly.

To fully capture the relationship between COVID and education, one must also talk about how COVID-19 affected education.

Ms. Stacey Akines and her wonderful poster

Stacey Akines, a history graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, studied how education was changed by the pandemic.

First, she realized that COVID schooling crossed over with homeschooling. Then she uncovered that more Black people started to research and teach their children about Black history. This desire to teach youth more about their history caused an increase in the number of Black homeschoolers. In fact, the number of Black homeschoolers doubled during the fall of 2020. While to some, this change to homeschooling may have a negative impact on one’s life, it actually gives the student more opportunities to learn things.

It is no secret that there are many books being banned here in the U.S., and there are many state curriculums that are changing to erase much of Black history. Homeschooling a child gives the parent an opportunity to ensure that the education they receive is true to and tells their history

Unlike me, where during high school, education felt lackluster and limited because of COVID, some parents saw an opportunity to better their child’s education.

A hall of Posters

I hope that it is clear that the relationship between COVID and education is a complex one. Both can greatly impact each other, whether it’s for the better or for the worse. COVID thrives when we are uneducated, and it very nearly destroyed education too, but for the efforts of some dedicated educators.

Post by Jakaiyah Franklin, Class of 2025

Insights on Health Policy Research from Undergraduate Cynthia Dong

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On November 7, 2022

In Medicine, Neuroscience, Students

“After COVID-19,” senior Cynthia Dong (T’23) remarks, “so much of what was wrong with the medical system became visible.”

Duke undergraduate Cynthia Dong, Class of 2023

This realization sparked an interest in how health policy could be used to shape health outcomes. Dong, who is pursuing a self-designed Program II major in Health Disparities: Causes and Policy Solutions, is a Margolis Scholar in Health Policy and Management. Her main research focus is telehealth and inequitable access to healthcare. Her team looks at patient experiences with telehealth, and where user experience can be improved. In fact, she’s now doing her thesis as an offshoot of this work, researching how telehealth can be used to increase access to healthcare for postpartum depression.

Presenting research on telehealth

In addition to her health policy work, however, Dong also works as a research assistant in the neurobiology lab of Dr. Anne West, and her particular focus is on the transcription mechanism of the protein BDNF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factor.

While lab research can be clearly visualized by most people (think pipettes, rows of benches littered with bottles and plastic tubes, blue rubber gloves everywhere), health policy research is perhaps a little more abstract. When asked what the process of research through Margolis is like, Dong says that “it’s not team-based or individual – it’s a lot of both.” This looks like individual research on specific topics, talking to different stakeholder groups and people with certain expertise, and then convening for weekly team meetings.

With other Margolis Scholars

For Dong, research has been invaluable in teaching her to apply knowledge to something tangible. Doing that, you’re often “forced to understand that not everything is in my control.” But on the flip side, research can also be frustrating for her because so much of it is uncertain. “Will your paper get published? Is what you’re doing relevant to the research community? Will people invest in you?”

In that vein, research has humbled her a lot. “What it means to try to solve a societal problem is that it’s not always easy, you have to break it down into chunks, and even those chunks can be hard to solve.”

After graduation, Dong plans on taking a couple of gap years to be with family and scribe before ultimately pursuing an MD-MPH. Because research can be such a long, arduous process, she says that “It took me a long time to realize that the work we do matters.” In the future, though, she anticipates that her research through Margolis will directly inform her MPH studies, and that “with the skills I’ve learned, I can help create good policy that can address the issues at hand.”

An Interview With Undergraduate Researchers and Labmates Deney Li and Amber Fu (T’23)

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On November 1, 2022

In Medicine, Neuroscience, Students

What brings seniors Deney Li and Amber Fu together? Aside from a penchant for photoshoots (keep scrolling) and neurobiology, both of them are student research assistants at the lab of Dr. Andrew West, which is researching the mechanisms underlying Parkinson’s in order to develop therapeutics to block disease progression. Ahead lie insights on their lab work, their lab camaraderie, and even some wisdom on life.

(Interview edited for clarity. Author notes in italics.)

What are you guys studying here at Duke? What brought you to the West lab?

DL:  I am a biology and psychology double major, with a pharmacology concentration. I started working at a lab spring semester of freshman year that focused on microbial and environmental science, but that made me realize that microbiology wasn’t really for me. I’ve always known I wanted to try something in pharmaceutics and translational medicine, so I transitioned to a new lab in the middle of COVID, which was the West lab. The focus of the West lab is neurobiology and neuropharmacology, and looking back it feels like fate that my interests lined up so well!

Deney Li

AF: I am majoring in neuroscience with minors in philosophy and chemistry, on the pre-med track. I knew I wanted to get into research at Duke because I had done research in high school and liked it. I started at the same time as Deney – we individually cold-emailed at the same time too, in the fall! I was always interested in neuroscience but wasn’t pre-med at the time. A friend in club basketball said her lab was looking for people, and the lab was focused on neurobiology – which ended up being the West lab!  

Amber Fu

What projects are you working on in lab?

DL: My work mainly involves immunoassays that test for Parkinson’s biomarkers. My postdoc is Yuan Yuan, and we’re looking at four drugs that are kinase inhibitors (kinases are enzymes that phosphorylate other proteins in the body, which turns them either on or off). We administer these drugs to mice and rats, and look at LRRK2, Rab10 and phosphorylated Rab10 protein levels in serum at different time points after administration. These protein levels are important and indicative because more progressive forms of Parkinson’s are related to higher levels of these proteins.

AF: For the past couple of years, I’ve been working under Zhiyong Liu (a postdoc in the lab). There are multiple factors affecting Parkinson’s, and different labs ones study different factors. The West lab largely studies genetic factors, but what we’re doing is unique for the lab. There’s been a lot of research on how nanoplastics can go past the blood-brain barrier, so we are studying how this relates to mechanisms involved in Parkinson’s disease. Nanoplastics can catalyze alpha-synuclein aggregation, which is a hallmark of the disease. Specifically, my project is trying to make our own polystyrene nanoplastics that are realistic to inject into animal models.

What I’m doing is totally different from Deney – I’m studying the mechanisms surrounding Parkinson’s, Deney is more about drug and treatments – but that’s what’s cool about this lab – there are so many different people, all studying different things but coming together to elucidate Parkinson’s.

Another important project

How much time do you spend in lab?

DL: I’m in lab Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9 to 6. All my classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays!

AF: I’m usually in lab Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12 to 4, Fridays from 9 to 11:45, and then whenever else I need to be.

Describe lab life in three words:

DL: Unexpected growth (can I just do two)?

AF: Rewarding, stimulating, eye-opening.

Lab life also entails goats and pumpkins

What’s one thing you like about lab work and one thing you hate?

DL: What I like about lab work is being able to trouble-shoot because it’s so satisfying. If I’m working on a big project, and a problem comes up, that forces me to be flexible and think on my toes. I have to utilize all the soft skills and thinking capabilities I’ve acquired in my 21 years of life and then apply them to what’s happening to the project. The adrenaline rush is fun! Something I don’t like is that there’s lots of uncertainty when it comes to lab work. It’s frustrating to not be able to solve all problems.

AF: I like how I’ve been able to learn so many technical skills, like cryosectioning. At first you think they’re repetitive, but they’re essential to doing experiments. A process may look easy, but there are technical things like how you hold your hand when you pipette that can make a difference in your results. Something I don’t like is how science can sometimes become people-centric and not focused on the quality of research. A lab is like a business – you have to be making money, getting your grants in – and while that’s life it’s also frustrating.

What do you want to do in the future post-Duke? How has research informed that?

DL: I want to do a Ph.D. in neuropharmacology. I’m really interested in research on neurodegeneration but also have been reading a lot about addiction. So I’ll either apply to graduate school this year or next year. My ultimate goal would be to get into the biotech startup sphere, but that’s more of a 30-years-down-the-road goal! Being in this lab has taught me a lot about the pros and cons of research, which I’m thankful for. Lab contradicts with my personality in some ways– I’m very spontaneous and flexible, but lab requires a schedule and regularity, and I like the fact that I’ve grown because of that.

AF: The future is so uncertain! I am currently pre-med, but want to take gap years, and I’m not quite sure what I want to do with them. Best case scenario is I go to London and study bioethics and the philosophy of medicine, which are two things I’m really interested in. They both influence how I think about science, medicine, and research in general. After medical school, though, I have been thinking a lot about doing palliative care. So if London doesn’t work out, I want to maybe work in hospice, and definitely wouldn’t be opposed to doing more research – but eventually, medical school.

What’s one thing about yourself right now that your younger, first-year self would be surprised to know?

DL: How well I take care of myself. I usually sleep eight hours a day, wake up to meditate in the mornings most days, listen to my podcasts… freshman-year-Deney survived on two hours of sleep and Redbull.

AF: Freshman year I had tons of expectations for myself and met them, and now I’m meeting my expectations less and less. Maybe that’s because I’m pushing myself in my expectations, or maybe because I’ve learned not to push myself that much in achieving them. I don’t necessarily sleep eight hours and meditate, but I am a little nicer to myself than I used to be, although I’m still working on it. Also, I didn’t face big failures before freshman year, but I’ve faced more now, and life is still okay. I’ve learned to believe that things work out.

A hard day’s work

Cancer Stigma, Contraceptives, Covid-19: 2022 Global Health Research Showcase

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On October 21, 2022

In Cancer, Field Research, Global Health, Medicine, Policy, Science Communication & Education

Last Monday, Oct. 17, Duke University students who had conducted global health research had the opportunity to present their work. From North Carolina to Sub-Saharan Africa, the 2022 Global Health Research Showcase featured works that tackle some of the world’s most pressing health issues. Over 40 undergraduate, Masters, and PhD student projects examined a broad range of issues, determinants, and phenomena in countries from almost every continent. Here’s a few project highlights, in case you missed it:

Maeve Salm, pursuing her Master of Science in Global Health, went to Tanzania to study contraceptive use. Tanzania’s youth are highly impacted by teen pregnancy, and Salm wanted to understand desires for contraceptive use among adolescents affected by HIV. She learned that, much like in the U.S., stigma influences access to sexual healthcare for adolescents. This qualitative study aimed to support young people in achieving their desired health outcomes and reducing HIV transmission by examining barriers and facilitators to family planning. Findings indicate that youth agency in reproductive health is of utmost importance.

Maeve Salm presenting her poster at the 2022 Global Health Research Symposium.

Wondering about the Covid-19 response in other countries? Master of Science in Global Health Candidate Stephanie Stan explored the barriers and enablers to the pandemic response in Peru. Per capita, Peru experienced the highest mortality rate form the disease compared to any other country. Due to several challenging factors, they were slow to receive COVID-19 vaccines. However, they implemented highly successful vaccination campaigns once vaccines were obtained. What can be learned from Peru’s pandemic response? Prolonged and proactive collaborations between sectors (healthcare, academics, and government) enable swift public health responses in a crisis. It’s important to have elected officials who are empowered to make decisions promoting science.

“Definitely meeting all the incredible people that I interviewed and learning about their work and involvement in Peru’s pandemic response. Learning about what happens moving forward from their point of view.”

Stephanie Stan, when asked about her global health research experience

Winning the first-place Graduate Student Research Award, Judith Mwobobia’s project examined the stigma of cancer in sub-Saharan Africa. Stigma is a huge barrier to receiving treatment, which is a problem considering that 70% of global cancer deaths originate from Africa. Perceptions of financial stress, misconceptions about cancer, and fear of death were common attitudes driving cancer stigma. Proposed interventions included education and policy recommendations for low-resourced communities. Mwobobia is pursuing her Master of Science in Global Health. Clearly a supportive group, her classmates erupted in cheers when the award was announced.

By Victoria Wilson, Class of 2023

“Of Sound Mind”: a Discussion of the Hearing Brain

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On October 18, 2022

In Behavior/Psychology, Biology, Computers/Technology, Lecture, Neuroscience, Science Communication & Education

“To me [this image] captures the wonder, the awe, the beauty of sound and the brain that tries to make sense of it,” said professor Nina Kraus, Northwestern University researcher and author of “Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World.”

Stop. What do you hear?

We might not always think about the sounds around us, but our brains are always listening, said Northwestern University professor Nina Kraus.

Kraus, auditory researcher and author of “Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World,” spoke via Zoom to a Duke audience in October. She has published more than four hundred papers on the auditory system in humans and other animals and how it’s affected by conditions like autism, aging, and concussion. She discussed some of her findings and how “the sound mind” affects us in our day-to-day lives.

One of the slides from Kraus’s presentation. We can think of sound as having many “ingredients.”

“I think of the sound mind as encompassing how we think, how we move, how we sense, and how we feel,” Kraus said. We live in a “visually dominated world,” but for hearing people, sound plays an important role in language, music, rhythm, and how we perceive the world.

One of the slides from Kraus’s presentation. The human auditory system involves not just the ears but also several regions of the brain. The “hearing brain” engages movement, cognition, and emotions along with interpreting direct sensory input from all senses.

Kraus discussed the auditory system and how much of what we think of as hearing takes place in the brain. We can think of sound as signals outside the head and electricity as signals inside the head (neural processing). When those two merge, learning occurs, and we can make sound-to-meaning connections.

Another slide from Kraus’s presentation. In an experiment, teaching rabbits to associate a sound with meaning (in this case, more carrots) changed patterns of neuron firing in the auditory cortex, even in individual neurons. “Same sound, same neuron, and yet the neuron responded differently… because now there’s a sound-to-meaning connection,” Kraus said.

Despite how sensitive our neurons and brains are to sound, things can get lost in translation. Kraus studies how conditions like concussions and hearing loss can adversely affect auditory processing. Even among healthy brains, we all hear and interpret sounds differently. People have unique “sonic fingerprints” that are relatively stable over time within an individual brain but differ between people. These patterns of sound recognition are apparent when scientists record brain responses to music or other sounds.

“One of the biological measures that we have been using in human and in animal models,” Kraus said, is FFR (frequency following response) to speech. FFR-to-speech can be used to analyze an individual’s auditory processing system. It also allows scientists to convert brain responses back into sound waves. “The sound wave and the brainwave resemble each other, which is just remarkable.”

One of Kraus’s slides. Technology called frequency following response (FFR) can be used to convert brain waves back into original sound (like a song).

This technology helps reveal just how attuned our brains are to sound. When we hear a song, our brain waves respond to everything from the beat to the melody. Those brain waves are so specific to that particular song or sound that when scientists convert the brain waves back into sound, the resulting music is still recognizable.

When scientists try this on people who have experienced a concussion, for instance, the recreated music can sound different or garbled. Experiments that compare healthy and unhealthy brains can help reveal what concussions do to the brain and our ability to interpret sound. But not everything that affects auditory processing is bad.

Musical training is famously good for the brain, and experiments done by Kraus and other scientists support that conclusion. “The musician signature—something that develops over time—” has specific patterns, and it can enhance certain components of auditory processing over time. Making music might also improve language skills. “The music and language signatures really overlap,” Kraus said, “which is why making music is so good for strengthening our sound mind.” Kids who can synchronize to a beat, for example, tend to have better language skills according to some of the experiments Kraus has been involved with.

Musicians are also, on average, better at processing sound in noisy environments. Musicians respond well in quiet and noisy environments. Non-musicians, on the other hand, respond well in quiet environments, but that response “really breaks down” in noisy ones.

Interestingly, “Making music has a lifelong impact. Making music in early life can strengthen the sound mind when one is seventy or eighty years old.”

A slide from Kraus’s presentation. Musicians tend to be better at processing sounds in noisy environments.

Exercise, too, can improve auditory processing. “Elite division 1 athletes have especially quiet brains” with less neural noise. That’s a good thing; it lets incoming information “stand out more.”

In experiments, healthy athletes also have a more consistent response over time across multiple trials, especially women.

These benefits aren’t limited to elite athletes, though. According to Kraus, “Being fit and flexible is one of the best things you can do for your brain,” Kraus said.

Kraus and her team have a regularly updated website about their work. For those who want to learn more about their research, they have a short video about their research approach and an online lecture Kraus gave with the Kennedy Center.

Nina Kraus with a piano. “Science is a deeply human endeavor,” she said, “and I think we often forget that. It’s made by people.”
Photo courtesy of Kraus and colleague Jenna Cunningham, Ph.D.
Post by Sophie Cox, Class of 2025

Jason Dinh Once Collected Cicadas, Now He Researches Snapping Shrimp

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On March 14, 2022

In Animals, Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Students

Jason Dinh’s research career began unintentionally with a semester at Duke’s Marine Lab. A current fourth-year PhD candidate in Duke’s Biology Department, Dinh ventured to the Marine Lab for a mental reset in the spring of his sophomore year as a Duke undergraduate. “While I was there, I realized that people can just get paid to ask questions about how the world works,” Dinh told me, “And I really didn’t know that was a thing that you could do.” Maybe this is what I want to do, he thought.

Jason Dinh, fourth-year PhD candidate in Duke Biology Department

Dinh spent his remaining undergraduate summers investigating the impacts of soundscapes on oyster and fish larvae development. Now, he studies snapping shrimp – a small oceanic species that is “one of the biggest sound producers in the ocean,” bested only by toothed whales.

Dinh first became aware of snapping shrimp during his undergraduate research. He told me that you can find snapping shrimp “basically anywhere, from the equator up to Virginia or maybe North Carolina.” While conducting research on ocean sounds and oyster and fish larvae, Dinh noticed the frequent snapping sounds of the snapping shrimp when he placed underwater microphones. “We didn’t really know what they were doing,” Dinh said.

An image of a species of snapping shrimp like Dinh works with.

The male snapping shrimp is asymmetrical with one very large claw and one that is regular-sized. The large claw has a tiny hook on the end and when the shrimp clamps down or “snaps” the claw, the top half latches into the bottom, shooting out an air bubble at sixty miles per hour that “essentially boils the water behind it,” producing the loud snapping noise in its wake. When many shrimp are snapping at once, it sounds almost like the frying grease when cooking bacon, Dinh tells me. (Click here to watch a video of the snapping shrimp in action.)

At first, researchers suspected the bubble from the snap was a means of stunning prey, but “It turns out that snapping shrimp also fight each other,” Dinh said. And when fighting, male snapping shrimp shoot the air bubbles at one another. The bigger the shrimp’s body size, the larger the snapping claw and the louder the snapping sound.

An image of two snapping shrimp facing off.

Going into his PhD, Dinh wanted to continue his undergraduate work in acoustics and figure out novel ways animals were producing sounds. His investigation of the snapping shrimp took him in new directions, however. Through his projects, Dinh has conducted work on the costs and benefits that keep the claw size as an honest indicator of shrimp size in competitions and approached a plethora of questions from the physiological and physical mechanisms of sending and assessing snaps, up to the evolutionary implications of the sexual selection for claw size.

“I don’t think I really knew I wanted to do research until right before I applied for grad school,” Dinh said at the beginning of our conversation. He remembers being a child curious about nature and bringing in “hundreds of cicadas” and “random critters into the house.” A few decades later and his research is centered on living creatures, which is both a rewarding and tricky process.

“Live animals are going to do what live animals want to do,” Dinh stated simply. “One thing my advisor always tells us is that you don’t get to tell the animal what to do, it tells you what you are going to do.” This has certainly held true for Dinh. While he has had many detailed and well-planned experimental ideas, he says he’s ultimately ended up doing what the “animals told him they were willing and happy to do in the lab.” However, along the way Dinh basks in the “joys in tiny discoveries in the process of research.”

I asked Dinh how he ended up at Duke in the first place and why he chose to stick around for his PhD. “So I ended up at Duke for undergrad because I really liked basketball, which is a really bad reason to choose a school.” But ultimately, this choice “paid off really well because my first year was the last year we won the National Championship,” Dinh said. He traveled to Indianapolis for the event which he says was the “best basketball game of [his] life.”

Dinh decided to do his PhD at Duke because of how deeply he admires his advisor, Sheila Patek (PhD), as a scientist. “I think she’s just a wonderful, passionate, passionate defender of basic science and just doing science because more knowledge is good for society,” Dinh elaborated, “Sheila’s also a staunch and fearless advocate for her students.” Though Dinh considers himself an “outlier” in the lab – primarily a behavioral ecologist in a lab of researchers investigating biomechanics – the way that Patek approaches science is the way that he wants to approach science as well.

Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, Dinh compares the diving explorations of science as being a “professional rabbit holer.” Science consists of picking questions further and further apart and leaning into research findings to tunnel into topics.

“I feel like science is being a professional rabbit holer,” Dinh stated. While Dinh is on the pursuit of the weapon size and fighting strategies of snapping shrimp, he doesn’t know exactly where he wants to head next, following the completion of his PhD. Like the snapping shrimp that collect information about their opponents to make an informed decision about engaging in fights, Dinh says he is conducting a sort of Bayesian method of his own. He’s assessing his experiences as he goes and sorting out the right next step for him.

A fan of the meditative art of writing, long morning walks with his dog, and reality TV, Dinh appreciates being “on the frontier of what we know” and is sure to let his deep-rooted curiosity about the natural world continue to guide him.

By Cydney Livingston

What’s Up In Space? 3 Experts Weigh In

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On March 8, 2022

In Computers/Technology, Engineering, Environment/Sustainability

On Friday, February 25th, 2022 the brand-new Duke Space Diplomacy Lab (SDL) had an exciting launch with its first panel event: hosting journalists Ramin Skibba, Loren Grush, and Jeff Foust for a conversation on challenges in space within the next year. Moderated by Benjamin L. Schmitt of Harvard University, the conversation was in line with the SDL’s goals to convene a multidisciplinary group of individuals for the development of research, policy proposals, and solutions to mitigate risks in space.

In conversation, three key themes arose:

  1. U.S Russia Relations

With the current Russian invasion in Ukraine and the subsequent strain on U.S-Russia relations, the geopolitics of space has been in the limelight. Control of outer space has been a contentious issue for the two countries since the Cold War, out of which an uneasy yet necessary alliance was forged. Faust remarked that he doesn’t see U.S-Russia space relations lasting beyond the end of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2030. Grush added that before then, it will be interesting to see whether U.S-Russia relations will sour in the realm of space, simply because it’s questionable whether the ISS could continue without Russian support. However, Russia and NASA have historically acted symbiotically when it comes to space, and it’s unlikely that either party can afford to break ties.

2. Space debris

Major global players, from the U.S to China to India to Russia, are all guilty of generating space debris. Tons of dead satellites and bits of spacecraft equipment litter the areas around Earth – including an estimated 34,000 pieces of space junk bigger than 10 centimeters – and if this debris hit something, it could be disastrous. Grush paints the picture well by comparing spacecrafts to a car on a road – except we just trust that the satellite will maneuver out of the way in the event of a collision, autonomously, and there are absolutely no rules of the road to regulate movement for any other vehicles.

A computer-generated graphic from NASA showing objects in Earth orbit that are currently being tracked. 95% of the objects in this illustration are orbital debris, i.e., not functional satellites.

Skibba suggests that the best thing to do might be to make sure that more stuff doesn’t enter space, since the invention of technologies to clean up existing space debris will take a while. He also points to efforts to program new spacecrafts with graveyard orbit and deorbit capabilities as a necessary step.

3. Who is in charge of space?

Faust explained that commercial space exploration is moving incredibly fast, and legal regulations are struggling to keep up. Tons of companies are planning to launch mega-constellations in the next few years, for reasons that include things like providing higher-speed Internet access – something that we can all benefit from. Yet with new players in space comes the question of: who is in charge of space? The Artemis Accords are the existing rules that govern space at an international level, but they function as an agreement, not law, and with more players in space comes a need for legally binding terms of conduct. But as Grush puts it, “there’s a tension between the nimble, rapid commercial environment and a regulatory environment that wasn’t quite prepared to respond.”

The eight signees of the Artemis Accords

Beyond who rules over space, there’s also the question of decolonizing space. Skibba brings up that amidst a growing number of mega-constellations of satellites being launched, there are key questions being asked about who has access to space, and how we can level the playing field for more countries and companies to enter space exploration.

Space is uncharted territory, and to understand it is no small feat. While science has come incredibly far in terms of technological capabilities in space, it’s clear that we don’t know what we don’t know. But with a more multilateral, global approach to exploring space, we may just be able to go even farther.

Post by Meghna Datta, Class of 2023

The Mind Behind Muser

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On February 14, 2022

In Computers/Technology, Faculty, Field Research, Students

Biology professor Sheila Patek remembers when she was an undergraduate, petrified as she waded through the world of academia in search of a research position. Knocking on door after door, Patek promised herself that if she was able to enter that world of research, she was going to change it; she was going to help students find opportunities and shift the rigid, exclusionary culture of academia.

Years later, Professor Patek was able to keep her promise. She created Muser, a website to connect students to research opportunities in an effort “to achieve accessible, transparent, equitable, and multidisciplinary research experiences for students and mentors.”

Patek first began this effort as a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts, where she found few efficient pathways for undergraduates to find research opportunities. Patek had grown accustomed to being at UC Berkeley, where they utilized a fully integrated system known as the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program. The University of Massachusetts was more reminiscent of Patek’s own undergrad experience, and it was there that she and her colleagues began working on the first version of Muser’s software. This is the version that she brought with her when she came to Duke.

Here, we’re lucky to have a slew of resources — DukeList, the Undergraduate Research Support Office, Bass Connections — that are intended to help students pursue research. However, Patek says that Muser distinguishes itself by being specifically designed to address the many barriers that still prevent students from pursuing research — from a lack of support and resources to racial and gender biases. 

Team Muser: (from left) Sheila Patek, Founder; Sonali Sanjay, Co-Student Leader; Katherine Wang, Co-Student Leader; Theo Cai, Duke Undergrad Muser Director and Nowicki Fellow (Credit: Ben Schelling)

One way Muser does this is by making all initial applications anonymous. Patek mentions studies that have found that things like the race and gender connotation of names have significant influence on who gets a position; for example, when given CVs that are identical except for the gender of the names, faculty are more likely to rate the male CVs higher. From the mentor side of Muser, research leads see students’ personal statements first, then must formally review the applications if they wish to view all the information the student has provided — including their names. Patek notes that it has surprised and perhaps frustrated many mentors, but it’s a feature for the benefit of students; it allows them to first be heard without the preconceptions attached to something like their name.

On the flip side, Muser tries to keep things as transparent as possible for students (although anonymous mentors are in the works). There are set timelines — called “rounds” — in which mentors post positions and students apply then hear back. With most other forums for research like DukeList, students are expected to check in and apply constantly — not even knowing if they will get a response. Muser solves this through these rounds, as well as a unique “star” system: mentors that actually review every application get a gold star, visible to students applying. 

So far, over three thousand (3000) undergraduates have used the software, and Patek estimates that in 2021, 20% of Duke undergraduates had, at some point, held a research position thanks to Muser. She also boasts the diversity of research leads that have become involved with Muser; it features professors, graduate students, and lab managers alike as mentors, who represent a better gender and diversity balance than academia as a whole. But as much progress has been made, Patek’s ultimate dream would be for every project in every department to be posted on Muser, available for undergraduates who don’t have to worry about being denied because of bigotry or ignored altogether. 

“The culture of academia is fundamentally opaque to everyone not in it,” Patek notes, but she and the Muser team are doing everything they can to change that. The newest version of Muser’s software — open source on GitHub and available for free — has recently been adopted by Harvey Mudd College and the University of Massachusetts, and Patek expresses her hope for the idea to spread nationwide. 

Universities that have adopted Muser

The website used to be called MUSER — an acronym meaning Matching Undergraduates to Science and Engineering Research — but nowadays, it’s known simply as “Muser.” I’ve been told that the rebranding is a play on words, referencing the Muses of Greek and Roman mythology who oversaw the full range of arts and sciences, to represent all thinkers. 

The next round of Muser for Summer 2022 research positions opens on February 19. Mentors can post opportunities NOW, until February 18. For more information, visit the website and check out this fantastic article introducing Muser.

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