An Interview with Angie Berg and Tyler Gibson, 2001 Howard Hughes Research Fellows
Angie Berg and Tyler Gibson were Research Fellows in 2001 and graduated from Duke in 2004. Angie is now a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. She is studying the biomechanics of bird flight. Tyler, after a year of employment and study, including a summer in Beijing at the Santa Fe Institute’s Complex Systems school, is a Ph.D. candidate in biophysics at Harvard.
The following interview was conducted during the fall of their senior year.
----
“The coursework and summer programs have been a springboard to my future career plans,” says Tyler Gibson, a senior biology major from Anderson, South Carolina, who was both a Howard Hughes Research Fellow and a Summer Scholar. “The opportunities available to students make the science more exciting.”
Angie Berg, a senior biology major from Taylorsville, Utah, who was also a Research Fellow the summer before her sophomore year, agrees. Berg says that it was her early exposure to hands-on research projects that inspired her involvement in further research activities at Duke. “It got me started in real lab work and encouraged me to continue in research and ultimately pursue that beyond undergraduate work.” Angie has been actively involved in research since the Research Fellows program, and intends to pursue a graduate degree in biomechanics.
From their earliest days on campus, students who take advantage of Howard Hughes-funded courses are able to work in the laboratory. “Being able to participate and conduct research in the lab gives Duke students a unique advantage,” says Gibson, who is now applying to computational biology research labs across the country prior to going to graduate school in mathematical biology. “I’ve been able to gain a practical understanding for how biological systems work and the possible causes of complex behaviors.”
The experience of designing and running lab experiments also acquaints students with the intricacies of the research process. As Berg explains, “The summer program introduces undergraduates to how science really works from the development of an idea for a potential project to finding ways to carry that out and ultimately being able to produce something to present to other members of the scientific community.”
Students also gain insight into the interdisciplinary nature of genomics and bioinformatics, and develop the skills necessary to bridge different subject areas. Berg adds, “It [her Research Fellows experience] has provided the background I needed to be able to branch out from this field of research to others.”
Angie and Tyler's mentor, Fred Nijhout, a developmental biologist in the Biology Department who serves as a faculty leader for the Making Meaning of Genomics program and teaches the program’s Genomics and Evolution capstone course, echoes that sentiment. He believes students who take part in the Howard Hughes-funded programs and courses have the unique ability to immerse themselves in this rapidly developing area of genomics early on in their undergraduate careers.
“This is an area in which everyone is furiously learning what it is all about – where the boundaries are and what the best methods are to use in the analysis of genes and genomes,” said Nijhout. “Our students can play an active part in this discovery process.”
Nijhout and the other faculty members who are participating in Making Meaning of Genomic Information programs and courses are highly accessible to students and are committed to fostering supportive research networks that advance the goals and interests of individual students. “Our doors are wide open. We actively look for students interested in joining research groups,” explains Nijhout. “Our students are encouraged to examine real problems for which there are no known solutions as yet and design projects that are exploratory and novel. They can participate in research that actually moves the field forward.”
As part of the capstone course taught by Nijhout, students pursue an independent project based on their own interests and knowledge base. They present their findings, which represent the culmination of their studies at Duke, at the end of the semester.
Students like Berg and Gibson say they believe the mentorship and enthusiasm exhibited by the faculty has further enriched their academic experience. Nijhout, who has been teaching at Duke for 26 years and has mentored some 100 undergraduate research students in the course of his career, strives to equip students with the tools and concepts necessary to understand and critically analyze genetics and genomic processes. “I try to get students to think about things in novel and critical ways and teach the mathematical, chemical, and physical approaches that they need to answer the questions that may arise,” he said. And, Nijhout explains, the faculty has “the exciting opportunity to teach at the same time that we’re learning. It allows our teaching to keep pace with the frontiers of the field.”
Nijhout stresses the importance of approaching the study of genomics from a mechanistic standpoint, which he says gives a much deeper insight into why genomes or genetic systems behave the way they do. This approach complements, but is distinct from, the standard statistical association method for analyzing genomes. Nijhout places critical emphasis on identifying the pathways and mechanisms by which genes affect biological systems.
Angie and Tyler are both eager to venture forth into the “real world” after graduation, ultimately to careers in research and teaching, just like their mentor. And, they agree that their experiences with Hughes-funded opportunities at Duke helped bring them to this point. “There is so much to be explored and discovered,” said Berg, as she recounts her experience studying the life sciences at Duke. “It’s very exciting.”