Melissa Manus earned her Master of Science in Global Health in 2016 and went on to complete a Ph.D. in biological anthropology at Northwestern University in 2022. She will begin an appointment as an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at San Antonio in January 2024.

My undergraduate degree was in ecology and evolutionary biology, but I also had an interest in human health, disease, and science in general. I wanted a way to combine all that and after graduating, I took a gap year where I spent some time in South Africa doing malaria public health education and prevention work. This experience got me even more interested in human health. I then applied to a handful of master’s programs that had aspects of public and global health and finally chose Duke. I liked that the program was more research-oriented than most, and when I visited the school, I asked lots of questions and felt I had found the right fit for me.

I wanted to work with a mentor who would allow me to combine my interests in ecology, evolution, and human health, which isn't always the most obvious combination. I had identified Professor Charlie Nunn as my mentor before I joined the program and met him when I visited Duke. He hadn’t sent students to his field site in Madagascar before, and so there were lots of unknowns going in. However, it all worked out and we built a great interdisciplinary team of students. I got to be a part of other projects and I learned so much in the time there. My master’s thesis explored environmental influences on the skin microbiome of people living in Mandena, Madagascar.

The global health master’s program set me up for success. It was exactly what I needed at the time.  I joined the program open to exploring, and I found that working with my mentor and other students in his research group was one of the best parts. In the lab I got to know some Ph.D. students, and they were of great help since I was considering pursing a Ph.D. program. After graduating, I stayed on for two more years with the lab as a research associate, managing some of the other projects the lab was doing in Madagascar. At the same time, I served as the assistant director of the Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine which was just starting out. All these experiences solidified and made clear what I wanted to do in my Ph.D. program.

I recently completed my Ph.D. in biological anthropology at Northwestern University (2022). I am now a postdoctoral fellow with a maternal-child health lab at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. I am working on a global health project that is focused on breast milk and infant growth in Canada, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, and Pakistan. I am studying the microbiome of breast milk, alongside collaborators who are exploring milk’s nutritional, hormonal, and immunological composition. This is exciting for me as I began doing microbiome research while doing my masters at Duke, continued during my Ph.D., and am now using those skills in my postdoc. I will be starting as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at San Antonio in January 2024, where I plan to continue to apply microbiome science to study the influence of early life environments on infant health.

I learned to stay open minded and to take advantage of the opportunities that I found along the way. In reality, I can’t take them all, but I can do as much as I can to try as many things as possible. As I look toward the next stage of my career, I must remember to keep an eye out for new opportunities to learn new things and work with new people.
 
More generally, my time at Duke reinforced the value of being respectful, hardworking, and humble throughout every stage of research. I hope to create a research program that is built on these values. I feel very fortunate to be part of the Duke community, which opened many doors for me. I intend to “pay it forward” and use my experiences to support future students and trainees.