Duke Awarded NIH Grant to Prep Students for Grad & Medical Programs
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Bernadette Gillis
Senior News Writer/Producer, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, Duke University School of Medicine
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Gayathri Devi Receives ACTS Award for Partnership and Innovation
Gayathri Devi, PhD, MS, is the recipient of this year’s Award for Addressing Health Equity Through Partnership and Innovation from the Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS).“These award winners and their work represent the values and mission of ACTS for innovation, team science and community involvement applying principles of translational science,” said ACTS President Allan R. Brasier, MD.Devi received the award this week in the iconic International Ballroom of the historic Washington Hilton during the Translational Science 2025 meeting in Washington, D.C. The award recognizes investigators who translate their findings from bench to bedside to curbside."The Translational Science meeting is vital to the community because it provides opportunities to engage and learn about innovative, collaborative approaches to research, like those of Dr. Devi, which seek to improve health outcomes,” said ACTS Executive Director Kim Stelmaszak, CAE.Devi is a professor of surgery at the Duke School of Medicine and the program leader of the Duke Consortium for Inflammatory Breast Cancer. She received this award in recognition of the work conducted by the Rare 2 Care team. Rare 2 Care is a multidisciplinary, global partnership to develop innovative disease models, therapeutic strategies and community engaged research with providers and advocates to dismantle barriers to health care for patients with rare cancers.“Our team has made significant strides in addressing rare breast cancer care and health disparities, particularly in aggressive subtypes like triple-negative breast cancer and inflammatory breast cancer,” Devi said. “The initiative that started in 2015 has grown into a multifaceted rare cancer collective driven by the "Bench to Bedside to Curbside and Back" ethos, integrating clinical and laboratory findings with community-driven research. This holistic strategy ensures that scientific discoveries have real-world applications that benefit both patients and the broader community.”
Filling in the Gaps
When Gabriella Torres was eight, she needed steroids to control asthma and allergies. Then her allergist recommended she take up swimming, and it helped. When she was nine, her younger brother was diagnosed with leukemia. He was treated and recovered. But watching him go through that left an impression.As she got older, Torres had nothing but questions. Why did swimming improve her asthma? Why did her brother get so sick? And why did treatment work for him when it doesn’t for so many other children?Torres was driven to find the answers. In college at New York University, she thought about becoming a pediatric oncologist; she pursued research experiences recommended for students interested in medicine. But then during her junior year an internship at a pharmaceutical company got her interested in pursuing a PhD. “I had never heard of getting a PhD before that,” said Torres, who is from New York City, where her parents are chefs. “But I was able to see that I could use my love of thinking critically about problems long term but still work on a project that relates directly to helping people.”Torres was on the swim team in college and spent much of her free time training. But she got as much research experience as she could, then applied to the integrative immunobiology PhD program at Duke University School of Medicine in 2023.Torres didn’t get in. Her goal of becoming a scientist could have ended there. Instead, she received a call from Johnna Frierson, PhD, associate dean of equity, diversity, and inclusion for the basic sciences at the School of Medicine, asking her if she’d be interested in applying for Duke’s PRIME PREP Program, which provides a year of research experience to recent undergraduates.Torres interviewed for PRIME PREP and got in, then she spent time at Duke conducting research in the lab of Stacy Horner, PhD, associate professor in integrative immunobiology.
Related News
Gayathri Devi Receives ACTS Award for Partnership and Innovation
Gayathri Devi, PhD, MS, is the recipient of this year’s Award for Addressing Health Equity Through Partnership and Innovation from the Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS).“These award winners and their work represent the values and mission of ACTS for innovation, team science and community involvement applying principles of translational science,” said ACTS President Allan R. Brasier, MD.Devi received the award this week in the iconic International Ballroom of the historic Washington Hilton during the Translational Science 2025 meeting in Washington, D.C. The award recognizes investigators who translate their findings from bench to bedside to curbside."The Translational Science meeting is vital to the community because it provides opportunities to engage and learn about innovative, collaborative approaches to research, like those of Dr. Devi, which seek to improve health outcomes,” said ACTS Executive Director Kim Stelmaszak, CAE.Devi is a professor of surgery at the Duke School of Medicine and the program leader of the Duke Consortium for Inflammatory Breast Cancer. She received this award in recognition of the work conducted by the Rare 2 Care team. Rare 2 Care is a multidisciplinary, global partnership to develop innovative disease models, therapeutic strategies and community engaged research with providers and advocates to dismantle barriers to health care for patients with rare cancers.“Our team has made significant strides in addressing rare breast cancer care and health disparities, particularly in aggressive subtypes like triple-negative breast cancer and inflammatory breast cancer,” Devi said. “The initiative that started in 2015 has grown into a multifaceted rare cancer collective driven by the "Bench to Bedside to Curbside and Back" ethos, integrating clinical and laboratory findings with community-driven research. This holistic strategy ensures that scientific discoveries have real-world applications that benefit both patients and the broader community.”
Filling in the Gaps
When Gabriella Torres was eight, she needed steroids to control asthma and allergies. Then her allergist recommended she take up swimming, and it helped. When she was nine, her younger brother was diagnosed with leukemia. He was treated and recovered. But watching him go through that left an impression.As she got older, Torres had nothing but questions. Why did swimming improve her asthma? Why did her brother get so sick? And why did treatment work for him when it doesn’t for so many other children?Torres was driven to find the answers. In college at New York University, she thought about becoming a pediatric oncologist; she pursued research experiences recommended for students interested in medicine. But then during her junior year an internship at a pharmaceutical company got her interested in pursuing a PhD. “I had never heard of getting a PhD before that,” said Torres, who is from New York City, where her parents are chefs. “But I was able to see that I could use my love of thinking critically about problems long term but still work on a project that relates directly to helping people.”Torres was on the swim team in college and spent much of her free time training. But she got as much research experience as she could, then applied to the integrative immunobiology PhD program at Duke University School of Medicine in 2023.Torres didn’t get in. Her goal of becoming a scientist could have ended there. Instead, she received a call from Johnna Frierson, PhD, associate dean of equity, diversity, and inclusion for the basic sciences at the School of Medicine, asking her if she’d be interested in applying for Duke’s PRIME PREP Program, which provides a year of research experience to recent undergraduates.Torres interviewed for PRIME PREP and got in, then she spent time at Duke conducting research in the lab of Stacy Horner, PhD, associate professor in integrative immunobiology.