Our Community in the News

This collection of stories showcases the transformative work our Duke Latiné/Hispanic employees are doing in their professional lives and within our communities. Send us your stories

You can also learn more about ongoing activities, volunteer opportunities, and more in the ¡DALHE! quarterly newsletter, which is published four times per year. Check out our most recent issues:

Duke Views: Portraits and Narratives

Lauren Valle, 2025 Duke graduate in biology, was the winner of this year’s Julia Harper Day Award for Documentary Studies (CDS), one of the university’s leading student awards in the arts. Valle’s capstone project, “Unseen Histories: Latinidad in Focus,” consists of large-format black-and-white portraits and personal narratives of 10 student activists. Shown here is Mariana Meza Mantilla, a rising senior, whose studies focus on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Empowering Communities: Duke Medical Students Lead Cancer Awareness Training with El Centro Hispano

On May 7, two Duke medical students partnered with a faculty member from the Department of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences to support a pilot initiative called LIDERES (Latino Initiative for Delivering Education and Raising Engagement on Screening for Head & Neck Cancer). The students led a two-hour workshop in Spanish focused on head and neck cancer awareness and early detection techniques.

Building a Workplace of Belonging

¡DALHE! is among the many employee-led resource and affinity groups at Duke that bring colleagues together. The groups promote inclusion while fostering connections among colleagues and the wider community.

Harnessing the Body’s Ability to Heal Itself

Biomaterials are all around us. They are the bandages in our first-aid kit, the fillings in our teeth and the capsules that contain the medications we take. Biomedical engineer Tatiana Segura, PhD, and her team are developing biomaterials that harness the body’s ability to heal.

What Comes Next: Integrative Immunobiology

Dr. Raphael Valdivia, the Nanaline H. Duke Distinguished Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, emphasizes the need to understand the human immune system to address diseases like cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. His research focuses on leveraging AI and genetic engineering to guide immunity, highlighting Duke's strengths in transplant immunology and infectious disease research.

Bohórquez, Brinkley-Rubinstein Receive Presidential Early Career Awards

School of Medicine faculty members, Diego V. Bohórquez, PhD, and Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, PhD, have been honored with Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers early in their careers.

Interpretation Services Make Duke Research Accessible to Spanish Speakers

Spanish is the second most common language in the United States and Durham. By law, clinics with patient services must make their services accessible when a language is strongly represented in the community. However, scientific research is not always accessible to Spanish-speaking families. At the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development, researchers are working to ensure that research outcomes are broadly applicable.