Ph.D. Fellowships Provide Valuable Support for the Duke Brain Sciences Community

“Brain scientists, clinicians and scholars have been dealing with tough times this past year,” said Marc Sommer, director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences (DIBS). 

He noted that, although Duke’s schools and departments have been very supportive in helping their faculty and research groups with bridge funding and other initiatives, there’s an opportunity for DIBS to lend additional assistance during challenging financial moments.

“DIBS has focused specifically on ways to support graduate students and postdoctoral fellows,” Sommer said. “They’re the heart and soul of research. We want to encourage them to continue and accelerate their work on the brain. Their achievements now could lead to lifelong careers.”

To assist with this, DIBS is providing two funding opportunities: Germinator awards, which are supporting research projects for three postdoctoral fellows and three doctoral students, and 19 Ph.D. fellowships, which have been awarded to students from a wide variety of departments and schools within the university.

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The Ph.D. fellowships will support the graduate students’ stipends and research, as well as provide a training allowance for professional development, such as attending conferences and participating in grant writing and other skill-building workshops.

Sommer pointed out that, in addition to assisting the students, the awards also help departments and interdepartmental programs across Duke, especially in the School of Medicine, where many labs and research groups have experienced delayed or terminated grants.

“The opportunity for our Ph.D. students to integrate into this interdisciplinary ecosystem through the DIBS fellowships is both unique and timely, given the current financial pressures on scientific research,” said Beth Sullivan, associate dean of research training in the School of Medicine. “DIBS has such an important impact on the neuroscience and brain-focused research mission of the institution.”

“The DIBS fellowships provide a vital new form of support for our graduate students and their faculty mentors at a time when both internal and external funding is ever more uncertain,” said Tobias Egner, chair of Psychology and Neuroscience. “We’re very grateful for the additional security and flexibility these fellowships supply to some of our most talented and hardworking students.”

Of the 19 fellowships granted this year, three are specifically for dissertation research on Alzheimer's disease. These awards are made possible by a generous donation from the Karen L. Wrenn Trust, which has supported Alzheimer's research at Duke for many years. “We've supported two Wrenn Fellows in the past and, after consultation with the donors, we decided to support three this time,” Sommer said. “Philanthropy like this is the engine behind all the initiatives we do, and we're very grateful for these partners.”

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The other 16 fellowships were distributed to students researching a wide variety of topics. Sommer and his colleagues wanted to cast a wide net, moving beyond just those studying brain sciences to include brain-related work in the humanities, arts and social sciences. They contacted over 50 departments and programs, ultimately inviting dozens of candidates to apply.

“We want to support the best, most promising research and scholarship on campus related to the brain,” Sommer said. “In addition to medical fields, we’ve received wonderful applicants from the humanities, from public policy, and from a wide variety of other disciplines.

“I think this really shows the pervasive interest in the brain sciences at Duke. And this is exactly what DIBS is for: to bring people together and to build community across the university for everyone who is interested in this vast, fascinating field of study. Progress in understanding the brain and mind has wide ranging impacts on health, technology and culture.”

Learn more about DIBS’s community building efforts

Dream Team awards to support interdisciplinary scholarship

Germinator awards for new research initiatives