

From Patient to Student to Physician-Researcher: Sonali Biswas’ Quest to Serve
Pursuing a career as a plastic surgeon has been a perfect fit for Sonali Biswas. Drawn to art at an early age, she would often sketch out human figures on paper, connecting bones and muscles with each scratch of her pencil or swipe of her paintbrush.

Joining Forces to Fight Childhood Obesity
As a pediatrician, Sarah Armstrong, MD, has devoted her career to improving children’s health and well-being.
“My training allowed me to deal with most of the pediatric conditions that came into my office,” Armstrong said, “but by the late 1990s – early 2000s, something different was emerging. More kids were coming in with obesity and exhibiting adult-type problems.”

A New Day for People with Drug-Resistant Epilepsy
Neurosurgeon Derek Southwell, MD, PhD, has been at Duke only since 2019, but he has already expanded the options for epilepsy treatment in the state of North Carolina. As both clinician and researcher, Southwell works every day to improve the lives of people with this challenging condition, in which nerve cell activity in the brain is disturbed, causing seizures.

We Are What We Breathe
When Duke pulmonologist Rob Tighe, MD, thinks about the biggest effects of climate change on society, polar bears, barren crop fields, and underwater beach houses are not the first images that come to mind.