Yvonne Mowery, MD, PhD, Butler Harris Assistant Professor in Radiation Oncology, is one of many physician-scientists at Duke who credits the Duke University School of Medicine’s Strong Start Program for her career growth.

Postdoctoral Fellow Binita Chakraborty, PhD was intrigued: in published analyses of large numbers of patients with melanoma (skin cancer) treated with an immunotherapy that is becoming standard of care, the treatment worked better in men than in women.

Turning a Terrifying Ordeal into an Opportunity to Help

When reports early last winter indicated that a mysterious new infectious disease had broken out of its point of origin in Wuhan, China, Charles Lucore, MD’83, P’17, MBA, began to prepare for its possible arrival in New York.

Eric Dziuban, MD’07, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s country director for the southwest African nation of Namibia, was enjoying a weekend at the coast with his family when the call came. A Romanian couple who had recently arrived in the Namibian capital of Windhoek from Spain had fallen ill. Tests confirmed everyone’s fear: COVID-19 had finally come to Namibia.

Breast cancer researcher Donald McDonnell, PhD, met his wife, Mary, in Maine for a week of vaca­tion. Sitting at a secluded inn on Anne’s Point, McDon­nell, Coleader of the Women’s Cancer Research Program at the Duke Cancer Institute, couldn’t stop thinking about what he had heard at a meeting.

In 2016, Duke employee Brandy Chieco was a new mom with a three-month-old baby boy when her own mom, Brenda Brooks, was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma, which tends to arise in the joints.

Twin 9-year-old girls at Duke Health became the first in the United States to participate in a Pfizer and BioNTech Phase 1 study to evaluate safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in preventing COVID-19 among healthy children below the age of 12.

A surgical team expands the reach of Duke’s cardiovascular care to bring lifesaving treatment to patients with few other options.

As far back as Donna Bernstein can remember, the ethos of giving back has been as much a part of her as her name or the color of her eyes. She comes from strong Jewish roots, and her parents instilled in her and her sister and three brothers the Jewish principle that everyone has a responsibility to help others through charity and service.