Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
On a sweltering morning in late May, eight undergraduate students from across the country gathered in a third-floor classroom in the Reuben-Cooke Building — a space recently renamed in honor of one the “First Five” Black undergraduate students at Duke. The classroom is rife with first-day jitters. Just days before, the newly arrived interns — many of whom are first-generation students from HBCUs and small liberal arts institutions — moved into dorm rooms on Duke’s West Campus. The diverse cohort was selected from a… read more about Summer Research Program Tackles Longstanding Issues in Diversifying Undergraduate Training Opportunities »
Amber Fu is a senior majoring in neuroscience with minors in philosophy and chemistry. This past summer, she participated in the Summer Neuroscience Program (SNP), an eight-week Duke summer program that enables undergraduates to jumpstart their senior theses by working one-on-one with faculty mentors. “I was excited to participate in SNP and become closer to the neuroscience community,” Fu shared. “I wanted to learn more about what kind of research other undergrads are working on. Even though we’re all studying… read more about SNP Student Spotlight: Amber Fu »
DURHAM, N.C. -- Fake it ‘til you make is true for children too, it turns out: Young girls embracing the role of a successful female scientist, like Marie Curie, persist longer at a challenging science game. A new study, appearing Sept. 28 in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that science role-playing may help tighten the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and careers for women simply by improving their identity as scientists. Frustrated by the gender gap in STEM, in… read more about First-Grade Girls Stick With Science After Pretending to be Marie Curie »
At Duke, Lihua Mo-Hunter (B.S. Neuroscience; minor Dance and Linguistics ’23) has been laser focused on a pre-med track. This summer, Mo-Hunter worked with the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI) Student Research Training program, traveling to Kalangala, Uganda, to study sickle cell disease and to educate the local community. She’s found that her coursework in neuroscience has provided more niche topics to study: cellular and molecular neurobiology, effects of marijuana on the brain and… read more about Dance Provides a Humanistic Outlook for a Future Neurosurgeon »
DURHAM, N.C. -- Data from the largest mental health survey of the Flint, Michigan community indicate that one in five adults, or roughly 13,600 people, were estimated to have clinical depression, and one in four, or 15,000 people, were estimated to have PTSD five years after the water crisis began. “The mental health burden of America’s largest public-works environmental disaster clearly continues for many adults in Flint,” said Aaron Reuben, a postdoctoral scholar at Duke University who led the research, which appears… read more about High Rates of Depression and PTSD Found in Flint 5 Years After Water Crisis »
Sara Rose Shannon is a senior with a major in neuroscience and minors in global health and chemistry. Shannon credits her curiosity as the main factor that brought her to Summer Neuroscience Program (SNP) – an eight-week Duke summer program that enables undergraduates to jumpstart their senior theses by working one-on-one with faculty mentors. “Since I developed such a love for Neuroscience, I chose Duke because it has so many talented researchers, and this program was the one that stuck out in comparison to the others,”… read more about SNP Student Spotlight: Sara Rose Shannon »
The Arts & Sciences Council’s Committee on Undergraduate Teaching has announced this year’s recipients of awards for excellence in undergraduate teaching. Each recipient was recognized at the council’s Sept. 8 meeting, where Committee Chair Connel Fullenkamp expressed appreciation for the many nominations across all three Trinity divisions that included “creative and inspiring” portfolios. “It made our decision very difficult because there are so many varieties of excellence that we see in our community at Duke,” he… read more about Four Trinity Faculty Honored with 2022 Undergraduate Teaching Awards »
DURHAM, NC – Naval oceanographer Carina Block had a hunch that the jet exhaust fumes she and her fellow female sailors were regularly exposed to, combined with unavoidable job stress, was leading to adverse health outcomes for their children. A new study in mice backs up Block’s suspicion, finding that air pollution along with housing insecurity while pregnant leads to autism-like social behavior and differently wired brains in male, but not female, pups. The immune system seems to be at fault. “I was pregnant, stressed,… read more about Air Pollution And Stress Alter Brains and Social Behavior of Male Mice »
Rising senior Aditya Kotla was excited to sign up for Summer Neuroscience Program (SNP), an eight-week Duke summer program that enables undergraduates to jumpstart their senior theses by working one-on-one with faculty mentors. He knew he wanted to get started on an independent project, and figured the summer would be the opportune time to do so. I’ve gained both technical and lab skills during my time in the Rawls Lab, at Duke Microbiome Center, and wanted to apply them to my own project. SNP was a great way to initiate… read more about Student Spotlight: Aditya Kotla »
Name Gabriel "Gabe" Grullon Hometown Manhasset, NY Major … read more about SNP Student Spotlight: Gabe Grullon »
When Lipstein came to tour Duke during her junior year of high school, the distance from Durham to her hometown of Armonk, New York did not matter at all. She was excited to become a Blue Devil and had a feeling that going the distance would surely be worth it. A recent graduate of Duke, ’22 Psychology, Lipstein is the recipient of the department of psychology’s prestigious Zener Award, an annual recognition given to an undergraduate student who demonstrates outstanding performance in scholarship within the department.… read more about Malorie Lipstein Wins Zener Award »
Duke University alumna Julie Uchitel, Class of 2019, has been awarded the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship. The award provides full funding for the graduate program of the student’s choosing at Stanford University. Uchitel is the seventh Duke student to win the award. She will use the scholarship to pursue an medical degree at Stanford School of Medicine. The scholarship was created through a gift from Nike founder Phil Knight, who seeks to educate scholars “who can out-think, out-work and out-care others.” Uchitel,… read more about Duke Alumna Awarded Knight-Hennessy Scholarship »
Five decades ago, Duke psychologists Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi began working with a long-term study of 1,000 people in New Zealand to get a better perspective on how childhood factors may have led to adolescent behaviors, such as risk-taking. But after following all the children born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972 and ‘73 for several decades, the married researchers’ questions began to shift: How were the childhood differences reflected in middle age health, and how is it… read more about Duke Psychologists Develop a Measure for Your Rate of Aging »
