Magnify Magazine | Duke University School of Medicine

Magnify is Duke University School of Medicine's flagship magazine, publishing both online and print versions. Two stories a month are posted online, focused on the people who make up the School of Medicine community.

A bi-annual print magazine is distributed to School of Medicine alumni, donors, and faculty. View the Fall 2025 issue.

If you have an idea for a Magnify story, we'd love to hear it. Please contact Shantell Kirkendoll at shantell.kirkendoll@duke.edu.

Debra Silver standing next to instruments in her lab

The Brain’s Blueprint Maker

March 11, 2026 By Mary-Russell Roberson

Debra Silver, PhD, is pursuing one of neuroscience’s biggest questions: What makes a human brain human? She researches it with the same mix of precision and adventure she brings to her passion for scuba diving.

illustration of a sign that says "burnout"

“The B-Word”: Changing a Culture of Burnout Shame

On Duke University’s medical campus, the Great Hall in the Trent Semans Center for Health Education is unusually still as a man walks solemnly to a chair seated on the stage. A palpable silence lingers heavy in the air as the speaker sits to face the audience, slowly lifting his eyes from a manuscript in his lap. He speaks fervently and brightly, but there are tears in his eyes and a discernable quiver with each word he utters.

Rodger Liddle Has A Gut Feeling About the Origins of Parkinson's Disease

What is a gastroenterologist doing studying Parkinson’s Disease?

This is a question that Rodger Liddle, MD, a professor in the Department of Medicine in the School of Medicine, gets a lot. The answer involves a superhighway, a conversation with a Nobel Laureate, and a plastic foot.

Liddle usually begins the story with the foot.

This Blue Devil Is In the Details: Meet Geeta Swamy

In January of 1996, a bitter-cold blizzard dropped more than a foot of snow on the Triangle. But Geeta Swamy, then a medical student at the University of North Carolina (UNC), climbed in her Mazda Sedan at 6 am and started a very slow but deliberate drive down Interstate 40, from her home in Chapel Hill to the site of her obstetrics gynecology (OBGYN) rotation at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh.

When she arrived, her colleagues were flabbergasted—why had she come in these conditions?

How Do Whales Fight Off Cancer? Scholar in Duke’s Marine Medicine Program Breaks New Ground In This Fascinating Inquiry

Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto was puzzled by a paradox: If cancer is a function of individual cells going haywire, wouldn’t an organism with a lot more cells, say a whale, have a greater chance of getting cancer than a human or a mouse?

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