May 2025 Newsletter

The SALA Series & Duke Climate & Sustainability Summit on May 21-22 provided an environment for important new learnings and the opportunity to explore solutions-oriented partnerships with purpose-driven leaders from a range of industry backgrounds and experiences. The dinner keynote featured a conversation on athletics, climate and sustainability with Duke leaders Nina King and Dr. Toddi Steelman.

On a beautiful spring afternoon, Germain Choffart’s French 101 students took a field trip to Duke Campus Farm, where they were greeted and guided — en français — by Saskia Cornes, Duke Campus Farm director and assistant professor at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. The visit was part of Choffart’s broader effort to weave themes of climate and sustainability into his French curriculum.

For M.D./Ph.D. student Trisha Dalapati, medical research is personal. She grew up visiting family in India, where diseases were spreading due to disruptions in the climate. Learn how her experiences shaped the way she thinks about and studies disease transmission, especially in relation to changing weather patterns.

On a recent episode of PBS North Carolina's State of Change: Living with Water, Ryan Emanuel from the Nicholas School of the Environment joined other panelists to discuss North Carolina's climate resiliency.

Climate change has a big impact on children. New research by a population health sciences researcher at Duke University School of Medicine could help track just how much.

Duke student Aaron Siegle is one of 55 scholars chosen from more than 400 nationwide. Majoring in environmental sciences and policy, he aims to spend his career in pursuit of a sustainable energy system, including building the necessary technology, coalitions of support and policy base to realize a net-zero future.

Physicians who practice obstetrics and gynecology have a direct planetary impact every day. Duke Obstetrics & Gynecology recently hosted a Climate Action Day, an event dedicated to addressing the climate crisis as a growing threat to maternal and community health.

During the pandemic, KC Ward transitioned from a medical assistant to an advocate for safe communal spaces with the East Coast Greenway Alliance. As an Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing student at Duke, she has combined her passions for health care and climate advocacy, emphasizing the critical intersection between the two. Inspired by her own medical experiences, Ward aims to practice in critical care, focusing on patient advocacy and health equity.

Stretches of dying forests near the coast are brought on by saline water intruding inland. With rising seas pushing back into freshwater rivers faster than before, "ghost forests" are becoming a more common sight throughout North Carolina’s coastline and the entire eastern seaboard at large. Read how researchers Duke University are learning to predict the rise of "ghost forests" in Eastern North Carolina.

During a course on ethics and environmental policy, Kendra Rentz T'25 learned how to connect with community members who were most likely to be impacted by climate change — and how to conduct research that could directly benefit them. Read about her journey on discovering her passion for working with communities at the grassroots level.

Learn how Duke researchers are conducting drone surveys of Antarctic islands to analyze where weather patterns have been shifting from cold, dry and predictable to warmer, wetter and more variable. Team members at the Palmer Antarctica Long-Term Ecological Research program are looking at how whales and other species are responding to this ecological shift.

Duke University graduate Lily Zhang's story in The Assembly, "Rooted in the Land, Ready for the Future," looks at an indigenous Coharie River community's relationship to their watershed – and explores how new generation of tribal scientists and storytellers is navigating the complexities of recognition and history, rebuilding ties to land and water, and preparing for what’s next.

June 4 - SciFi Cafe: Living with Wildfires with Toddi Steelman at the American Museum of Natural History, New York

June 9 - Deadline to join 2025-26 Bass Connections Project Team

July 13-15 - Duke will host the Inaugural Collegiate Sports Sustainability Conference

Fall 2025 - U.N. Climate Change Negotiations Practicum