Rebecca is a senior double majoring in English and Neuroscience. Growing up around writers, she always possessed a love for English and a desire to articulate her understanding of the works she read. When she entered high school, she also became immersed in Molecular Biology research and culminated this work as a Research Intern at NASA's Radiation Biophysics Lab. 

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Balancing these two fields of study, she originally believed she'd have to choose between them. But initiatives like HuMed helped her realize that she didn't need to pick one over the other—rather, she could combine them. She is so excited about this initiative and hope others are too!

Susan is a junior majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Creative Writing and Chemistry. She has always loved anything to do with the arts, growing up writing and running a literature magazine (palette-global.com) with her friends. She conducts research with Rhesus Macaques in Duke's Disney Lab, is a DJ for WXDU, and is an opinion columnist for The Chronicle. 

As someone pursuing medicine, she believes the humanities have a critical role in medical practice. In the face of widespread health inequity and systemic inequality, skills of communication, empathy, and storytelling are needed now more than ever. She looks forward to seeing what HuMed will accomplish!

Ursula is a junior pursuing a double major in Classical Civilizations and Evolutionary Anthropology with a concentration in Human Biology and a minor in Chemistry. A lover of history and aspiring doctor, Ursula’s interests lie on the intersection of history, medicine, and ethics. Apart from school, you can often find her hammocking in the Duke Gardens, trying new restaurants in Durham, or, occasionally, living in a tent in Kville.

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Ursula is excited to be part of HuMed, a community that bridges the gap between STEM and the humanities. She looks forward to helping bring the club’s message to fellow Duke students: that medicine is not just the science behind a diagnosis, but also the art of understanding people––a lesson taught by engaging with diverse perspectives explored through the humanities. 

Akshaya is a junior from Dallas, TX majoring in Environmental Science and minoring in Creative Writing. She is pre-med and hopes to work in the field of Environmental Health to understand how pollution impacts both the environment and human health. Growing up, she always loved to write and hopes to combine her interests in STEM and the humanities to better encourage change. She currently works in the Meyer lab researching how environmental toxins influence Parkinson's Disease. In her free time she enjoys volunteering at the Duke Greenhouse, drawing, and spending time with friends.

Abby is a senior majoring in neuroscience with a certificate in health policy. Her goal is to become a doctor one day, and she works in the West lab with her research focusing on Parkinson’s disease.

She joined HuMed because she believes the intersection between humanities and medicine is often overlooked and it is so, so important to incorporate both into one’s practices!

Sancia is a senior from San Diego, CA, double majoring in English and Biology. A lifelong creative writer with a passion for science, she has loved exploring these two fields at Duke, combining them when possible, and constantly developing her love for both. On campus, she is an editor of The Archive, the undergraduate literary magazine, and she does research in RNA therapeutics at Holley Laboratory.

She is thrilled to have found Duke HuMed club, where the worlds of healthcare and humanities coalesce. Her time in laboratories and literary spaces alike have taught her about the similarities between these seemingly disparate fields and the benefits of carrying practices across different subjects. She is excited to be a part of HuMed club and to help promote an interdisciplinary mentality across the literary and medical communities at Duke.

Isabella is a sophomore from Manhasset, New York, hoping to double major in Neuroscience and English and minor in Psychology. Isabella has loved books since childhood, inspiring her to create her own stories and poems. While her passion for English began early, her passion for Neuroscience began more recently.

Isabella is interested in both language and the mind it comes from, now researching memory and neurodegeneration at the Scott-Hewitt Lab.

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HuMed offers the interdisciplinary perspective and community Isabella has searched for, a place where she can combine her diverse interests. She is so excited to be a part of this team! 

Diya is a senior at Duke University studying Neurobiology and English. Growing up, she loved trips to the library and returning home with a towering stack of books. She also began exploring creative writing at a young age. In high school and college, she became fascinated by the way her biology instructors framed scientific concepts as narratives that build upon one another. She has carried this interest into her involvement in Parkinson’s disease and global neurosurgery research at Duke. She joined HuMed to continue exploring how stories– in classrooms, clinics, and beyond– shape the way we understand illness and care for one another.

A native of Iowa City, Iowa, Sibani graduated with a major in Evolutionary Anthropology, a concentration in Anatomy, and a minor in English. She started Duke Hu-Med (Humanities in Medicine) Celebrations because she felt that the Duke undergrad pre-health community lacked a space where those interested in both medicine and humanities (and Literature/English in particular) could come together to celebrate alumni innovating in both areas. Once the English department graciously funded two of her HuMed celebration ideas through the George P. Lucaci fund, she knew that she wanted to leave her mark on the Duke Pre-Health scene in a meaningful (and innovative) way. 

Priscilla Wald teaches and works on U.S. literature and culture, particularly literature of the late-18th to mid-20th centuries, contemporary narratives of science and medicine, science fiction literature and film, law and literature, and environmental studies. Her current work focuses on the intersections among the law, literature, science and medicine. Wald is currently Margaret Taylor Smith Director of the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and is on the Faculty Governance Committee of Science and Society and the steering committee of IS&S (Information Sciences + Information Studies) at Duke. 

Jennifer Lawson is a pediatrician at Duke General Pediatric and Adolescent Health and Faculty Associate of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities, and History of Medicine.  Her interests focus on medical humanities, climate change and health, diversity, equity and belonging, and physician well-being.  She appreciates transdisciplinary teams and is currently engaged in several collaborative initiatives at these intersections, including facilitating two sections in the Moral Movements in Medicine initiative: “Are You Listening?” and “Health as an Ecosystem.”   

Lily Fahs is a second-year medical student at Duke School of Medicine who graduated from Wheaton College (IL) in 2017 with a degree in English Writing. She went into undergrad interested in publishing or education, but by the time she graduated, she knew she wanted a more hands-on way to apply the empathy and curiosity my degree had developed. Exploring this desire led her somewhere initially unexpected: medicine. 

Although the structure of our educational systems can sometimes artificially separate the health sciences from the humanities, she has found that these disciplines have really tremendous synergistic potential in exploring big questions about what it means to live well as humans together. She wishes something like Duke HuMed had existed when she was an undergrad, so she is excited to help facilitate this important space for conversations at the intersection of the humanities and medicine.