Most lethal mutations in wild fruit flies are driven by newly transferred jumping genes, not small DNA errors, according to a new study from Duke University.The findings, published in PLOS Biology, challenge decades of assumptions in evolutionary genetics and may have implications for population health and conservation.“Almost every individual of any species studied has at least one lethal mutation,” said lead author Sarah Marion, who began this work as a biology graduate student at Duke and is now a postdoctoral… read more » about Newly Transferred Jumping Genes Drive Lethal Mutations
Learning a new language isn’t just about grammar and vocabulary, it’s a gateway to forming personal connections, shifting perspectives and viewing the world beyond our own front doors. “It’s one of the most transformative things a student can do in college,” says Luciana Fellin, professor of the practice in Romance Studies and Linguistics, and chair of the Trinity Language Council. “Languages aren’t just codes, they’re living systems infused with culture, history and complex societal issues.”At Duke… read more » about Language Is Culture; Culture Is Language
Trinity College of Arts & Sciences proudly celebrates the appointment of Roberto Lagos (M.A. Economics ’16) as the new President of the Central Bank of Honduras.Lagos earned his Master of Arts in Economics from Duke University in 2016. The program is designed to provide students with a rigorous, quantitative approach to economics while offering the flexibility to tailor the degree to their future goals. Through comprehensive training in economic analysis and quantitative methods, graduates are well… read more » about Duke Economics Masters Alum Roberto Lagos Appointed President of the Central Bank of Honduras
Thomas Newpher, associate professor of the practice of Psychology and Neuroscience, has been newly elected as the Councilor for Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN).FUN is an international organization supporting neuroscience research and education at the undergraduate level. They work to support more than 400 members who teach, mentor, and conduct research with undergraduates across a variety of institutions. Their mission is to support neuroscience faculty, enhance undergraduate participation in… read more » about Thomas Newpher Elected as Councilor for Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience
By his sophomore year of high school, Sam Stayn knew he wanted a career with purpose — he just didn’t know what form it would take. During the pandemic, Stayn enrolled in a virtual summer program at the Boston Architectural College. It was meant to be an exploratory, short introduction to design. Instead, it was transformative.“I realized that I needed a career path where creativity, analytical thinking and the act of making things are inseparable,” he says. That path widened his senior year, thanks to an environmental… read more » about Designing with the Climate in Mind
Digital communications pioneer recognized for foundational contributions to technologies enabling billions of devices from early modems to modern smartphones. read more » about Duke’s Robert Calderbank Receives Marconi Prize
World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto start-up, reached a major landmark last month. The total circulation of the company’s signature digital coin hit $5 billion, cementing its place as one of the world’s top cryptocurrencies.“New milestones achieved,” the company declared on social media. The president’s second son, Eric Trump, celebrated the moment with a series of fire emojis.Much of that success was down to an alliance with the crypto exchange Binance — founded by Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire mogul who… read more » about Lee Reiners Talks About Binance, Trump and the Future of Crypto
Dorsa Amir, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, was recently announced as a recipient of the 2026 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions by the Association for Psychological Scientists (APS). First awarded in 2010 and named after APS’s first president, the Spence Award honors particularly creative and promising APS members who embody the future of the field. This year, it recognizes six psychological scientists conducting cutting-edge research on topics ranging from… read more » about Dorsa Amir Receives 2026 Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions
“Abolitionist Archives, Feminist Futures” by professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Kathi Weeks will be released on March 24, 2026, by Duke University Press. What if feminism aimed not just to reform broken systems, but to abolish them? In her new book, “Abolitionist Archives, Feminist Futures,” Kathi Weeks invites readers to think about the future by looking into three feminist texts from the past. The professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist… read more » about Kathi Weeks’ New Book “Abolitionist Archives, Feminist Futures” Rethinks Feminism at the Root
Food is many things to many people: comfort, memories, gathering, tradition. While conversations about food often turn toward nostalgia, waxing on about local, organic, from‑scratch foods, just like our great‑great‑grandparents used to eat. Gabriel Rosenberg, associate professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies wants us to slow things down and ask a different question. In “Feed the People! Why Industrial Food Is Good and How to Make It Even Better,” available for purchase February 17,… read more » about Why Industrial Food Is Good, Actually
Duke University’s Air Force ROTC Detachment 585 has been named the nation’s top medium-sized ROTC detachment, earning the prestigious Right of Line award. Serving cadets from both Duke and North Carolina Central University, the detachment has been recognized for excellence across cadet development, academic performance, scholarship attainment and officer production. The award follows last year’s recognition as the top small detachment in the country. For prospective… read more » about Duke AFROTC Named Nation’s Best
What happens to a parka without a body? To a house that can’t stay put? To a tree who orbited the moon?For her latest work-in-progress, Torry Bend is letting go of the single, sweeping narrative. Instead, she has built a trio of self-contained puppetry-based vignettes bound by the shared theme of exploring change not as loss but as something generative — even hopeful. Set squarely in the Anthropocene (our current geological period, defined by the changes human activity imposes on Earth), “Tilt/Shift” has a notable lack… read more » about A Parka, a House, a Tree — and a World in Flux
Cynthia Rudin has been named a Fellow of the world's preeminent computing society — the Association for Computing Machinery — for her contributions to and leadership in interpretable machine learning and societal applications.The Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Lehrman Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Rudin “represent the top one percent of professionals in our association,” explained ACM President Yannis Ioannidis. Rudin’s research focuses on interpretable machine learning and its applications — … read more » about Association for Computing Machinery Selects Cynthia Rudin for Outstanding Achievement
Michael Troxel, associate professor of Physics and co-director of the SPACE Initiative at Duke, was recently awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Achievement Medal for his leadership in coordinating and delivering the OpenUniverse 2024 Roman/Rubin image simulations campaign. OpenUniverse simulation of what NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could see when it launches by May 2027. (Photo courtesy of C. Hirata, K. Cao and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center) The… read more » about Michael Troxel Awarded NASA’s Exceptional Public Achievement Medal
An international team of researchers with the Dark Energy Survey (DES) has released one of the most precise new measurements yet of how the universe expands over time. The results, based on hundreds of millions of galaxies, help scientists test the leading model of cosmology and probe the mysterious force known as dark energy that appears to be driving cosmic acceleration.Among the scientists shaping this latest analysis are Duke researchers, led by Associate Professor of Physics Michael Troxel, whose group has… read more » about Duke Scientists Help Sharpen the Picture of a Changing Universe
Online tools have long promised to demystify and streamline calorie tracking. Because if you can track your calories, you can create a calorie “deficit.” And taking in fewer calories than you expend ("calories in, calories out"—or CICO, as it’s known) has long seemed like the most airtight theory in health.And so many calorie-tracking apps depend on CICO for users. MyFitnessPal, the genre’s OG, launched way back in 2005. More than 20 years later, the service now holds a database of nutritional information for more than 11… read more » about Herman Pontzer Breaks Down Why Calorie Tracking Doesn’t Always Lead to Weight Loss
Doug Boyer, associate professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, received the American Association of Biological Anthropologists (AABA) Mid-Career Research Award, which honors mid-career scholars whose work has significantly advanced biological anthropology. Boyer’s research focuses on primate evolution and its environmental context, combining fossil discovery, analytical methods and a commitment to open and inclusive data sharing that has reshaped how comparative biological data are used worldwide. Boyer has been… read more » about Doug Boyer Wins American Association of Biological Anthropologists Mid-Career Research Award
As Americans struggle with how to effectively confront an autocratic leader and his billionaire backers as they brazenly dismantle democracy and the rule of law, they might well look to a southern state where an unlikely movement managed to defeat the extreme-right agenda of a governor who followed a similar path.History doesn’t always repeat itself, but it often rhymes, as the aphorism goes. Consider this:A newly-elected executive appoints a powerful donor and plutocrat to dismantle government root and branch, mounts broad… read more » about Nancy MacLean Reflects on The Impact of Moral Mondays
There is an ancient Otomi story about the beginning of the world. It’s a tale of a boy who, many years ago, escaped from the evil rulers of the world. He climbed a great tree, from which drops of water sprang forth, giving rise to corn. By the time the evil rulers realized what was happening, the boy had risen to become the Sun. The animated short film from “68 Voces - 68 Corazones” based on the Otomí (Hñähñul) traditional tale, "Ra m´ui ra hyadi ne ra tha" (The beginning of the… read more » about Bringing Indigenous Languages to Life Through Animation
Emily Derbyshire, Eads Family Professor of Chemistry, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. Fellows of the Academy, the honorific leadership group and scientific think tank within the American Society for Microbiology, are elected annually through a highly selective, peer-review process based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology. Over the last 50 years, more than 2,700 distinguished… read more » about Emily Derbyshire Elected to American Academy of Microbiology
Duke Libraries is pleased to announce its partnership with History doctoral candidate Jobie Hill on her newly funded project, Bearing Witness to Enslaved Women and Their Future Issue and Increase in the Massie Family’s 18th– and 19th-Century Reproductive Labor Systems (Bearing Witness). Hill is the recipient of a Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) award through its Digitizing Hidden Collections: Amplifying Unheard Voices program.Bearing Witness is one of sixteen projects that received funding through the… read more » about Duke Grad Student Awarded Grant to Digitize Historic Slavery Records
No, chimpanzees and other great apes cannot breed with monkeys. Even though we often think of primates – the order of mammals that includes great apes such as chimps and ourselves, gibbons, monkeys and much smaller mainly arboreal creatures such as bushbabies, galagos and lemurs – as being closely related, the common ancestor for this group goes back tens of millions of years.How long ago?The animals that became great apes split from those that became monkeys an estimated 25-30 million years ago. That’s a lot of time for… read more » about Jenny Tung Discusses How "20-30 Percent of all Primate Species Interbreed With One Another"
When most people hear the word “research,” they picture Bunsen burners and artifacts, datasets and libraries. But in dance reconstruction, research rarely resembles its conventional counterparts — it does not begin in a laboratory or remain confined to the page. Rather, the primary evidence unfolds through revisiting, remembering and reinhabiting work shaped by time and shared experiences. For Iyun Ashani Harrison, this embodied mode of inquiry framed his restaging of John Taras’ ballet “Firebird” for the Dance Theatre… read more » about The Body as Archive
In the fall, the Department of Romance Studies partnered with the French-American Chamber of Commerce of the Carolinas (FACC Carolinas) and SKEMA Business School to host the Journée Découverte du Français Professionnel et des Affaires: a symposium on French for business. Karine Provot (left) and Emma Howell (right) collaborated with SKEMA’s Director Gisa Rollin to bring around 40 French-speaking students from the international business school to campus for the event. (Jacob Whatley/… read more » about Discovering French for Business and Beyond
What happens when Chekhov meets clown?Chelsea Thaler, Duke Theater Studies’ 2025–2026 Artist-in-Residence, is exploring that question with “The Trio,” a contemporary, ensemble-driven adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters.” Developed through an intensive devising process with Duke students and professional collaborators, the production reframes Chekhov’s meditation on longing, frustration and endurance through physical comedy, gesture and experimental lighting and projection technology.Thaler’s background in… read more » about In "The Trio," Chekhov Meets Clown
I walked into the Bass Connections Fair with a set plan. Having looked over the project descriptions online, I knew the three I wanted to apply to and planned to only visit AI Global Health: Policy, Evidence and Financing for Responsible AI, Evaluating Debt-for-Nature Swaps and CHIPS Challenge: Technology, Policy and the Global Supply Chain. Navigating through the bustling atmosphere of students and faculty-manned booths, I headed for my choices only to get lost in the distracting displays of virtual reality… read more » about Redefining Research: Bass Connections Fair through the Eyes of a First-Year Student
Between the social media influencers extolling the benefits of local, organic and natural food, and the government’s new dietary guidelines commanding Americans to “eat real food,” ideally cooked from scratch, it’s easy to look at your beloved morning bagel with cream cheese and see only a minefield of ultraprocessing and refined carbs.But before you hurl that bagel into the trash, consider that it represents much that is good about our food system: It is affordable, convenient and nutritious. Virtually all the food we eat… read more » about Gabriel Rosenberg: Ultraprocessed, Industrial Food Is Fine
This Black History Month, one Austin company is working to preserve the history of the city’s African American community — even as longtime residents continue to be pushed out.Black Austin Tours leads walking tours through historically Black neighborhoods, highlighting churches, homes, murals and businesses that shaped East Austin and beyond.On a Tuesday morning, a Road Scholar tour group gathered along East 11th Street, listening as their guide pointed out landmarks and shared stories tied to the area’s past.The tour stops… read more » about Javier Wallace Highlights How Black Austin Tours Keeps Community Stories Alive
Whether you’re blissfully coupled, proudly single, or in a long-term relationship with your syllabus, Valentine’s Day has a way of drawing everyone into its orbit. At the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, love isn’t just written in a greeting card or wrapped in a box of chocolates — it’s studied, debated and (occasionally) quantified. This spring, a lineup of Trinity undergraduate courses explores love in many forms. Some consider desire and pleasure, others explore how we express emotion and forge… read more » about Cupid Goes to Class: Courses to Get You in the Mood for Valentine’s Day