Congratulations to recent ITEHP graduate, Emily Green, PhD, recipient of the 2026 Forever Duke Student Leadership Award! This award recognizes students who embody the “Forever Duke” spirit through service to the university and surrounding community. During her time at Duke, Emily served as a Lead Peer Mentor through the Office […]
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On April 30, ITEHP postdoc, Chelsea Hughes, and Meyer lab postdoc, Javier Huayta, participated in S.T.E.A.M. Week Career Day at a local Durham elementary school. We thank them both for sharing important environmental health science with the students! Chelsea Hughes, PhD, presented “Super Fish: Fish Living in Extreme Environments” to […]
Congratulations to ITEHP alum, Dr. Stacey Adam, who was presented Duke’s 2026 Centennial Distinguished Alumni Award at the PhD Hooding Ceremony on May 9th. Dr. Adam was advised by ITEHP faculty member, Dr. Chris Counter, and earned her PhD in Pharmacology/Molecular Cancer Biology with a Mammalian Toxicology certificate. She is […]
On Friday, June 7th, the Nicholas School of the Environment held its 2026 PhD Graduate Student Recognition Ceremony. The ITEHP was proud to see Drs. Christina Bergemann, Ilaria Merutka, and Emily Green recognized for their doctoral research. Their achievements were highlighted by mentors Joel Meyer, PhD (Bergemann) and Nishad Jayasundara, […]
Dr. Jason Somarelli, Assistant Professor in Medicine, conducts research focused on understanding the molecular constraints of living systems in extreme environments, including 1) cancer as a living system under the extreme conditions of therapeutic challenge, 2) the molecular adaptations of oxygen deprivation during diving in whales, and 3) the evolution […]
ITEHP PhD student, Kate Morton, won the Irwin Fridovich Young Investigator Award (one of the top two scored abstracts/presentations at the 2024 meeting of the Society for Redox Biology and Medicine). Irwin Fridovich was a Duke biochemist famous for discovering and describing the important antioxidant enzyme superoxide dismutase. Her talk […]
Two ITEHP students were invited to present on their research at the 13th International Conference on Environmental Mutagens in Ottawa, Canada this week! Tess Leuthner, PhD (ITEHP class of ’22), presented her work entitled, “Resistance of mitochondrial DNA to cadmium and Aflatoxin B1-induced germline mutations over 50 generations of exposure […]
Most people are familiar with the toxic effects of lead on the body. But did you know that the lead from hunting ammunition can transfer into the bloodstream of the animal and ultimately into the people who eat that meat? William Pan, DrPH and ITEHP faculty, and his team studied […]
Dr. Claudia Gunsch, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and ITEHP faculty member, is the the Director of the new Engineering Research Center for Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr), one of four recently created National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Centers. The PreMiEr project, collaborative with researchers from four other NC […]
Research by Liping Feng, MD, and Heather Stapleton, PhD, both faculty members of ITEHP, was recently featured in a Duke Today article. Together, they are working to explore the effects of exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds (PFAS, collectively) on maternal and fetal health. PFAS are used in everyday applications where […]
