Joseph Babcock
Web Committee Member
Duke University

Joseph is a junior from North Haven, Connecticut, who is double majoring in Biology and Chemistry. He has helped develop curricular activities for the Making Sense of Senses program, and edited papers, helped with fundraising, and contributed to website development for the Summer 2006 program. Prior to matriculation Duke, Joseph worked in the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory at the Yale Peabody Museum, reconstructing dinosaur fossils from a 19th Century dig. He also conducted physics research at the University of Connecticut, for which he was awarded semifinalist distinction in the 2002-2003 Intel Science Talent Search. He was also valedictorian of his class, a National Merit Finalist, an AP Scholar, and a Robert C. Byrd Scholar.  

At Duke, where he was awarded an Angier B. Duke Scholarship, Joseph has continued his research, first in the Chemistry Department, where he grew nanotubes freshman year, and currently in the Biochemistry Department, working on molecular mechanisms of transcriptional regulation. He also serves as a research assistant for Professor Rochelle Schwartz-Bloom of the Pharmacology Department, for whom he is writing a teacher's manual for a high school course on infectious diseases. Additionally, in the summer of 2005, he conducted immunology research at the University of Connecticut Health Center. Outside of research, he is an editor for Vertices (Duke's Undergraduate Journal of Science Research), The Blind Spot (Duke's Sci-fi Literary Magazine), and is on the student steering committee for the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research Symposium. Joseph's honors include being inducted into Phi Beta Kappa (Spring 2006), Phi Lambda Upsilon (Spring 2006), and receiving a Goldwater Scholarship. In his spare time, he has written a three hundred page science fiction novel that he is currently editing for future publication. After graduating from Duke, Joseph plans to pursue graduate work at the interface of molecular biology and pathology, through epigenetics and other systems biology approaches.