When K.V. Rajagopalan, PhD, arrived in the United States from India to begin his postdoctoral work in the Department of Biochemistry at Duke, he familiarized himself with the department’s members by reading their journal articles. Among them were a series of papers reporting startling research on oxygen radicals by a young biochemist named Irwin Fridovich, PhD’55.
Brant Inman, MD, MS, is skilled at the major surgeries that no one wants to be unlucky enough to have. “I’m the guy who when you’ve got a tumor this big, you call to take it out,” says Inman, holding his hands up in the shape of a grapefruit. “Yesterday I removed two bladders and replaced them.”
Dorothy Sipkins, MD, PhD, became fascinated by leukemia during her medical training. She remembers studying a biopsy from an elderly patient who had just had chemotherapy and was in remission. “You couldn’t see any leukemic cells; the bone marrow looked clean,” Sipkins remembers. But she knew that because of the patient’s age, her cancer was highly likely to return. Before long, her bone marrow would likely be full of cancer cells. Where were these cells hiding?
Scott Soderling, PhD, is having trouble sleeping. It’s not that he lies awake plagued by worries or woes. On the contrary, the problem is that he’s so energized by the discoveries coming out of his lab, and by the future paths those discoveries point toward, that he can’t wait to get in and start tackling the next step.
Samuel L. Katz, MD, described himself as merely a “young, enthusiastic, and naïve
pediatrician” who “came along at the right time, in the right laboratory, with the right colleagues.” This is a remarkably humble reframing of the accomplishments of the pioneering virologist, pediatrician, and chairman emeritus and Wilburt
C. Davison Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics at Duke University School of Medicine.
The sun was barely up when Paul L. Modrich, PhD, heard his phone signal a text message. It was from a former post-doc, who had just heard the big news on NPR and was sending a note of congratulations. Modrich, a bit puzzled, logged on to the Internet. “We were on vacation at our cabin in New Hampshire,” recalls Modrich’s wife, Vickers Burdett, PhD. “It was seven in the morning. I’m half asleep, and he comes in and shows me the iPad, and there it was. It’s been chaos ever since.”
Nimmi Ramanujam, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering and global health, has invented several innovative technologies that address the needs of women in developing regions.
Lawrence David, PhD, studies this hidden world, the community of hundreds of different species of bacteria that make up each person's gut microbiome. We are seldom aware of their presence, but they interact with us in countless ways and play a profound role in determining our health. In a way, they help make us who we are.
Growing up in Fairmont, West Virginia, James R. Urbaniak, MD’62, HS’62-’69, was an active and athletic boy who dreamed of playing professional sports. Then, at the age of 7, he came down with rheumatic fever. For three months he was confined to his bed. He didn’t know when—or whether—he would be able to go back outside and play ball again. But there was one thing he did know he could count on.
Tucker Roussin is a four-year-old healthy boy. When his mother, Katie, was 20 weeks pregnant, he was diagnosed with a pericardial teratoma, an extremely rare tumor that grows on the lining surrounding the heart. The tumor was almost as large as his tiny heart, and it was growing quickly. Clinicians at the Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) recommended an open fetal surgery to remove the tumor.