4 Ph.D. Students Receive Awards for Evolutionary Medicine Research

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Four Duke Ph.D. students were among the fall 2021 recipients of the Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine’s Graduate Student Awards.

The one-year awards help graduate students pursue research in evolutionary medicine relevant to their graduate research. The awards provide up to $7,500 per student for direct research expenses.

The Duke recipients and their funded research:

• Ashley Blawas (Marine Science and Conservation): Off the beating path: whale heart organoids as novel model for hypoxia tolerance
• Rachel Keener (Genetics and Genomics): Evolution of a novel plague receptor discovered through natural human diversity
• Yanting “Raven” Luo (Cell Biology): The role of human unique insertions in neurodevelopmental evolution and disease
• Jake Nash (Biology): Investigating a microbial rescue for trees under severe drought stress