DukeMed Alumni News

An interview with MS4 Brian Ketterman

An interview with Ashley Choi on what it was like to be a medical student during the COVID-19 pandemic.

An interview class of 2021 student Kirsten L. Simmons, MHSc.

Veteran Duke scientist and executive R. Sanders “Sandy” Williams has been named interim Vice President for Research and Innovation at Duke.

Duke medical and health professions students are playing a prominent role in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to the Duke Health community. 

More than 100 students from the School of Medicine have volunteered to assist with the administration of the vaccines at Duke vaccination sites. As of January 13, 2021, more than 18,000 vaccinations have been administered to Duke Health employees. Last week, Duke began vaccinating community members over the age of 75. 

Before Claire Aldridge, PhD’96, and her husband, Matt Burnside, took their daughter on a long-planned spring break trip to New York City, she checked travel guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where she is associate vice president of commercialization and business development. The focus at the time was on surface transmission of the novel coronavirus: avoid touching doorknobs, wash your hands frequently, and don’t touch your face.

In his nearly nine years working at Duke, Lowell Tyler says there have been countless times when he’s been the only Black person or Black man in the room. It can be a bit of a challenge, and even though it’s a situation he has gotten accustomed to, he says it’s one that can—and should—change.

Last spring, when Prince Boadi accepted an offer to attend Duke University School of Medicine starting in the fall of 2020, he knew the experience—leaving his family and friends in Chicago, learning his way around Durham, meeting new people, and taking on the rigors of medical school—would be different from anything else he’d ever done. He just didn’t expect it to be quite this different.

A Long Struggle

Eric Dziuban, MD’07, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s country director for the southwest African nation of Namibia, was enjoying a weekend at the coast with his family when the call came. A Romanian couple who had recently arrived in the Namibian capital of Windhoek from Spain had fallen ill. Tests confirmed everyone’s fear: COVID-19 had finally come to Namibia.

When reports early last winter indicated that a mysterious new infectious disease had broken out of its point of origin in Wuhan, China, Charles Lucore, MD’83, P’17, MBA, began to prepare for its possible arrival in New York. Lucore was one year into his new position as president of St. Francis Hospital, a highly rated hospital and cardiac care center on Long Island. Because New York is a hub of international travel, he anticipated the novel coronavirus would eventually show up.