When I first met Dr. Tung, she was my professor for a course in the Modeling in Economic and Social Sciences Focus program, a seminar program for first-semester freshmen. She told us that she had once been a Duke student in a Focus program, and said, “You see, if you work very, very hard for a long time, you can end up exactly where you started.”
Since the beginning of her undergraduate career, Dr. Tung has spent most of her time here at Duke. She completed her undergraduate degree in 2003, worked in Suriname as a field assistant for a year, and then returned to Duke to complete her PhD, co-advised by Dr. Susan Alberts and Dr. Greg Wray. Her work with Dr. Alberts, who studies social behavior, introduced her to the Amboseli Baboon Research Project (ABRP), with which she is still involved. Because of her work with Dr. Wray, who studies gene regulation, she was able to bring a genetics perspective to the ABRP. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Human Genetics Institute at the University of Chicago, and was appointed to a faculty position at Duke in 2012.
Besides the Focus course, Dr. Tung has also taught a primary evolutionary genetics course, a graduate seminar survey course, and a research methods course. She emphasizes the importance of writing skills and quantitative knowledge in her teaching, as she feels that these skills are extremely important in a research career.
Best thing about the interview: finding out that she took her first biology class from Dr. Grunwald! Small world…
