MGM News

Debra Silver, PhD, is pursuing one of neuroscience's biggest questions: What makes a human brain human? She researches it with the same mix of precision and adventure she brings to her passion for scuba diving.

An international research initiative co-led by Joe Heitman, MD, PhD, has secured a five‑year renewal to advance scientific understanding of fungi and their global impact. The CIFAR-funded program, Fungal Kingdom: Threats and Opportunities, brings together experts from multiple disciplines to investigate the complex roles of fungi as both emerging threats to human health and vital contributors to environmental and technological systems.

Researchers have uncovered a set of bacterial survival genes activated only inside TB’s hard‑to‑study granulomas, revealing new clues to how the pathogen endures our immune defenses.

Antifungal drug effort springs from Heitman‑led Fungal Kingdom program.

Graduate student Dana

Stephanie Diezmann, PhD, who received her doctoral degree from Duke in 2009,

Two faculty in the Duke University School of Medicine have been elected as fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology. Ed Miao, MD, PhD, Duke Health Distinguished Professor of Integrative Immunobiology, and Emily Derbyshire, PhD, Eads Family Professor of Chemistry, who has a secondary appointment in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, are among 63 new fellows elected for 2026.

John F. Rawls, PhD, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, has been named a Fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), the nation’s oldest and most prestigious medical society dedicated to disorders of the gastrointestinal tract.