This summer, one of the most rewarding parts of B-SURF was getting to hear from multiple members of Duke faculty about how they got involved in research and then specifically the research that they currently do. It is certainly endearing to know that you can have absolutely no idea what path you want to take in life, but still end up somewhere great. I also enjoyed the fact that we got to hear from people researching such diverse topics. Some of the biology was evolutionary and some micro. Some of the research implications dealt with the human brain and some with the colon. And some didn’t deal with humans at all. The one thing that was consistent among all the seminars is that each and every one of our speakers was extremely passionate about their contribution to the scientific community and that passion is what I enjoyed the most.
My favorite seminar this summer was Dr. Susan Alberts’. Her work on social determinants of health, ironically a class I planned on taking this spring, was so fascinating to me for a variety of reasons, the obvious being that I am intrigued by evolutionary biology/anthropology and the ways that are still very similar to some of our pretty close primate relatives, but also because I am interested in socioeconomic levels in the US and how it affects a person’s life. I found it fascinating that Dr. Alberts’ discussed not only the importance of socialness and social status in humans but also in baboons. The findings of her work also seemed to draw so many parallels between humans and baboons socially. For example, higher social status tends to correlate to higher access to resources and thus a lower mortality and higher fitness. While higher resource access doesn’t necessarily mean higher fitness in humans, it does usually equate to a lower mortality. I found the best part of her work was its’ interdisciplinary nature as it dealt with psychology and sociology, in addition to the obvious biology and evolutionary anthropology.
I am looking forward to the last two faculty seminars this week and learning more about some of the amazing research being done here at Duke.
