A recent article in the “European Journal of Clinical Investigation” identified five Duke researchers among the 400 most influential biomedical scientists in the world based on citation data from the past 15 years. The Chronicle’s Tim Bai sat down with the five scientists to learn more about their research.
Paging Dr. Blue Devil
Dr. Eric Peterson, director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, said he was a “late-bloomer” when it came to doing research, having limited experience until entering his medical residency.
“But then I got an opportunity to get a masters in public health, and I got hooked,” Peterson said.
Peterson said he had developed a natural talent for research and wanted to apply this skill to figure out how to improve patient care by utilizing new information from clinical research. He aimed to identify how to get Americans to lead healthier lifestyles through the use of biostatistics, health economics and decision analysis. As both a practicing physician and the author of many peer-reviewed publications, his job involves interaction between the lab and the clinic.
“I remain active in both the hospital and the clinic, and that’s my best place to generate ideas,” Peterson said. “On the other side, it’s great to see me being able to apply what I’ve learned in my research to the patients I’m seeing in the clinic and the [intensive care unit].”
Beyond these settings, though, Peterson said he is a true Blue Devil, adding that he spent last Friday night watching the Duke men’s basketball team take on Florida Atlantic University.
From shooting hoops to saving lives
Dr. Robert Califf, vice chancellor for clinical and translational research and director of the Translational Medicine Institute, began research during his time as a medical student.
“It turned out there was a job opening to see patients in a cardiologist clinic,” Califf said. “We were recording data in a database and that was my job.”
Califf’s work encompasses a broad spectrum of medical research, generating evidence to support clinical practice through clinical trials, health services research and quality improvement through developing solid medical databases. He is one of the most frequently cited authors, having written or co-written more than a thousand peer-reviewed scientific articles.
Califf said being exposed to computer interfaces in the 1970s long before they became personalized also helped to drive his unique advances forward. He encouraged students interested in research to consider the broad spectrum of available disciplines and to keep their eyes open for new avenues of research.
“Think carefully about the type of exposure you get to research,” Califf said. “If you’re really curious about how things work, you should do research and you should sample different kinds of research until you see what you like the best.”
Outside of his work, Califf enjoys golfing and listening to old-fashioned rock and roll. He was also a part of a state champion basketball team during his high school years, and said he continues to follow the sport to this day.
Persistence on the track and in the lab
Nobel laureate Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, James B. Duke professor of medicine and professor of biochemistry and immunology, has conducted 45 years of research, 40 of which occurred at Duke.
Lefkowitz, the first standing faculty member to receive a Nobel prize, said that students will have different experiences with research due to a variety of factors, such as their mentor, personal skill and luck. Lekowitz said he nearly quit after conducting research at the National Institute of Health because the project went badly and did not work until his final six months.
“By then I had already made arrangements to go back to clinical training because I was so fed up with research,” Lefkowitz said. “But then in my next phase of my career, which was doing advanced residency training, I started to miss research and realized I needed to go back into it.”
Lefkowitz’s work revolves around the characterization of the function of G-protein coupled receptors, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2012. His research on these receptors has led to major advancements in the development of prescription drugs for a variety of issues, ranging from allergies to coronary disease.
When asked about the European Journal of Clinical Investigation’s methodology in ranking the top researchers in the world, Lefkowitz explained that an important factor was the number of times a scientist’s work is referenced. While he believed this was a good index for scientific influence, Lefkowitz expressed some reservation with the “top scientist” designation because of differing citation practices among various scientific fields.
“For example, for whatever reason, clinical medicine gets a lot more citations than basic science, and even within basic science there is a hierarchy….So you would have to sort of take that into account,” Lefkowitz said. “I don’t know if I would conclude that just because somebody is the most highly cited that they are necessarily one of the top scientists in the world.”
When he is not conducting award-winning research, Lefkowitz said he reads non-fiction books, though he would like to read more fiction if he had the time. Given his family history of cardiovascular disease and having undergone a heart procedure himself, Lefkowitz said he makes time to take care of himself. He has been a long-distance jogger for most of his life and continues with frequent aerobic exercise in his “decked-out gym” in his home basement.
An industrious imagination
Marc Caron, James B. Duke professor of cell biology at the School of Medicine, said he got involved in research as a graduate student while studying for his Ph.D. at the University of Miami and has continued for approximately 37 years. Much of Caron’s research has also been involved with G-protein coupled receptors, and spent 20 years working with Lefkowitz in the past.
Caron explained that by around 1996 his research had become more focused on the application of G-protein coupled receptors from a neuroscience perspective. Caron said he and his group have made contributions to scientific literature through animal models of diseases like schizophrenia and depression.
“It is one of the systems presumably gone awry in schizophrenia, and it is the system that is affected when people develop drug abuse,” Caron said. “This is a lot of the work that we have published over the last 15 years or so.”
Caron admitted to being a bit of a workaholic who spends a lot of time in the lab. Caron noted that he works outdoors on the weekends to keep his house looking nice, and in some ways his work has developed into his passion and hobby.
“The fact that you’re always trying to chase something you don’t quite understand, it really pushes your imagination to try to discover something new,” Caron said. “It’s one of the most rewarding careers you can have.”
Bringing up farms and the next generation
Terrie Moffitt, Knut Schmidt Nielsen professor of psychology and neuroscience, has contributed greatly to the biomedical field with her long-term psychological research.
Moffitt, whose scientific work is also invested in development, has been at Duke since 2007. She said she is interested in training young people and helping them with their own research projects. As a researcher herself, she has contributed greatly to the biomedical field with her long-term psychological research.
Moffitt said she is currently focusing her efforts on two longitudinal studies in Britain and New Zealand. In Britain, her lab looked at twins born in 1994 and assesses how their mental and physical health has been affected by their experiences over the years. In New Zealand, the lab has tracked babies born in one city since 1972 in a similar fashion. Based on these studies, Moffitt and her lab were able to look at why connections between cardiovascular disease and depression exist and how they might affect or be affected by various lifestyles.
Moffitt praised the positive climate for scientific inquiry at Duke and also provided several words of advice for students thinking about conducting research.
“They should go into it with the attitude that ‘I’m going to try this out and just see if this grabs me,’ because if you fall in love in science, it can carry you for the rest of your life,” Moffitt said. “Not everyone will fall in love with it….But the only way to know really is by doing it.”
Moffitt currently owns a farm in Randolph County in North Carolina where Braxton Craven, the second president of the University, grew up.
“It’s a historic place—at any rate the farm has been allowed to run down over the years and I’m trying to fix it up,” Moffitt said. “At the moment, it has a lot of fire ants, poison ivy, black snakes and red dirt and rocks, but we’re going to make it into something very beautiful.”
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