Duke Next Generation Leaders Symposium

Duke Next Generation Leaders is an initiative at Duke aimed at bringing together cohorts of talented postdoctoral scientists and mentoring them on academic faculty careers. Selected candidates should be in the advanced stages of a postdoctoral fellowship and will be selected based on both research interests and their embodiment of the ideal of increasing diversity in the sciences. Selected Fellows will be paired with Duke faculty mentors, and will network with their mentors frequently. During a multi-day visit to Duke in the spring semester, fellows will present a seminar to the Duke community, interact with each other, and meet with departmental chairs and potential Duke collaborators.

This fellow program will bring together a cohort of promising new faculty committed to diversity in the biomedical sciences and provide enhanced opportunities for diversity in faculty hiring in this area at Duke. In doing so, we strive to overcome multiple barriers related to racism and bias in faculty hiring and will accelerate the development of a more inclusive faculty community.

This initiative began in 2022 with funding by the Duke Faculty Advancement Seed Grant Initiative and the Duke IDEALS office (additional support from the Duke Division of Integrative Genomics and the NIH Center for Combinatorial Gene Regulation) and is now supported by the Duke University School of Medicine.