Magnify Magazine

As an internal medicine-psychiatry resident, global health graduate student, and lieutenant commander in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, Colin Smith, MD, has had plenty of training and experience in adeptly navigating challenging and unfamiliar situations.

The questions pursued by Eva Naumann’s research team are nearly as large and intricate as the brain itself: How does the entire brain transform sensory inputs into actions, and what neural pathways do these impulses travel?

It’s a muggy morning in late August in Durham, N.C.—the temperature has already hit 85 degrees by 9 a.m.—and Jeff Letourneau is headed into the woods. The PhD student in Duke’s Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology is out looking for pawpaws—the green, mango-sized fruit with a creamy yellow center. He uses them to make a variety of foods and beverages for his family, including smoothies, custard, and even beer. Often, he just slices them open and eats them plain after being chilled in the refrigerator.

When Duke’s Charlene Wong, MD, MSHP, initially decided to pursue a Master of Science in Health Policy Research, she hoped to one day draw on that experience to help improve health and health care.  But she never expected that she’d be leveraging her skills to respond to the largest public health crisis of the 21st century.