Natural Sciences

Amplifying Stories of Environmental Racism, Resistance in North Carolina

While stepping into a new era with the Duke Climate Commitment, Duke also looks back on a long state history of environmental justice advocacy and the injustices that necessitate it.

A Year of Creativity and Bold Thinking Through Bass Connections

The 2021-2022 school year marked a series of welcome returns for the 1,200 students, faculty, staff and community partners who participated in Bass Connections. Our 61 year-long project teams resumed their in-person work on campus, many teams participated in their first fieldwork since 2019 and we were once again able gather together in Penn Pavilion to celebrate the year through our annual Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase.

Six Ph.D. Graduates Who Leveraged Bass Connections for Their Doctoral Training

Among the 2022 Ph.D. graduates are numerous students who took advantage of the Bass Connections program to strengthen their dissertation research, coauthor publications and hone career-enhancing skills. Many students also engaged in other interdisciplinary opportunities across campus.

Check out these doctoral student pathways.

Senior Spotlight: Reflections from the Class of 2022

These 10 seniors are among the nearly 600 Duke undergraduates who participate in Bass Connections each year. For some students, taking part in collaborative, interdisciplinary research confirmed and deepened their interests; for others, the experience opened up entirely new paths. Many students found ways to take their research further through honors theses and other opportunities.

Here are excerpts of what this experience has meant to them.

How Bass Connections Shaped Our Career Paths in Health and Medicine

For these five alumni, Bass Connections was a vital part of their journey to careers in health and medicine.

Alumni Spotlight: Shweta Lodha T’19

While at Duke, Shweta Lodha (Chemistry and Neuroscience ’19) was a member of a the 2017-2018 Patients ’ Journey to Medication Adherence project team.

Green turtle after nesting at dawn at Sandy Point in St. Croix

How a love of endangered leatherback turtles brought two alumni together

Writer:

Anton Zuiker

Late one sun-drenched afternoon in May, on the southwest tip of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Kelly Stewart Ph.D. ’08 was kneeling on the empty beach of the Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge when the park ranger pulled up on his all-terrain vehicle to see what she was doing.

Learning to garden brought her the thrill of wonder, the lessons of failure

Writer:

Hillary Barnes Martinez

In March 2020, as it became clear that we would be spending more time cloistered in our homes than ever before, I took up gardening. In the midst of chaos, digging in the dirt felt fitting, I decided. I would participate in a human experience that went back for millennia, in times of crisis and in times of peace. It felt universal.

DR/TL? (Didn't read, too long?)

Writer:

Scott Huler

Slow-growing microbes in peat bogs in the lazy South break down organic matter much more slowly than their northern relatives, making them much better carbon sinks and more effective in preventing the release of greenhouse gases than their counterparts further north.

Illustration of Titi Shodiya and Zakaiya Whatley who host the Dope Labs podcast

Meet the Duke Ph.D.s on a mission to make science more accessible

Writer:

Barry Yeoman

When Titi Shodiya and Zakiya Whatley launched the science podcast Dope Labs, they started not by talking about science, but instead by telling the story of their friendship.

“Zakiya and I met in grad school,” Shodiya Ph.D. ’15, a materials scientist and engineer, told listeners. “It was a tough time, to say the least. And in our pursuit to get the hell out of there, we became cousins. You know how Black folks do. She’s my play cousin.”

To Duke Alumni homepage

Natural Sciences

Amplifying Stories of Environmental Racism, Resistance in North Carolina

A Year of Creativity and Bold Thinking Through Bass Connections

Six Ph.D. Graduates Who Leveraged Bass Connections for Their Doctoral Training

Senior Spotlight: Reflections from the Class of 2022

How Bass Connections Shaped Our Career Paths in Health and Medicine

Alumni Spotlight: Shweta Lodha T’19

How a love of endangered leatherback turtles brought two alumni together

Writer:

Learning to garden brought her the thrill of wonder, the lessons of failure

Writer:

DR/TL? (Didn't read, too long?)

Writer:

Meet the Duke Ph.D.s on a mission to make science more accessible

Writer:

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