Inside Duke Medicine
Emmett wins HHMI fellowship
posted June 5th, 2008
Susan Emmett, a second year medical student at Duke, is one of 65 medical students nationwide to receive the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Training Fellowship that will fund her for a year of research at any institution of her choice and includes opportunities to share research with a network of other HHMI fellows and established scientists. Emmett worked with Nathan Thielman, M.D., to set up a third-year research project through Duke’s collaboration with the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi, Tanzania.
“I want to see if there are inexpensive clinical indicators that will help physicians decide when to switch antiretroviral regimens in order to mitigate antiretroviral resistance,” she said. “I was stunned when I got the e-mail saying I had been accepted. I couldn’t believe they would support clinical work. But I talked to my mentor at the NIH and she says that HHMI is realizing that there are some things you learn about medicine that you can’t learn in the lab.”