What are your research interests and ultimate career goals?
I study questions of fundamental cell biology, and I love the intellectual challenge of assembling a narrative from complex, and sometimes contradictory, data. My goal is to be able to do that long-term. The next step is a postdoc studying cell division in the unicellular eukaryote Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
What inspired you to pursue graduate school at Duke?
Before grad school, I spent several years in biomedical research as a laboratory technician, project manager, and clinical trials coordinator. I came to graduate school because I wanted to develop as an independent thinker. I chose Duke because it had the resources and research breadth to provide that training.
What is your favorite memory from graduate school at Duke?
Traveling overseas to central and eastern Europe for the first time was great! I visited Prague, Budapest, Vienna, and several cities in Germany in two separate trips.
How do you hope to make an impact with your research?
Black women are a very small percentage of biomedical scientists, and one important way in which I’ll make an impact is simply by being here. As people who were historically excluded from science become more vocal and visible, I think science is becoming a more responsible enterprise. Along those same lines, the stories we tell about ourselves as scientists are an important piece of our public narrative. I’ve written profiles of female scientists, and I’d love to do more of that.
Read more about the Class of 2021 at medschool.duke.edu/graduation2021