Feature Stories

Does Business Training Undermine Trust?

A few years ago, a famous economist asked “are business schools bad for business?”  As a partial answer, graduate student Kelli Lanier uses the methods of experimental economics to investigate whether business training makes students more competitive and less cooperative.


Breaking the Grip of Addiction

The image shows neural activity when a cocaine dependent subject counts words associated with his or her addiction.

Addiction to drugs is a multifacetted and powerful phenomenon -- and a debilitating affliction.  Graduate student Ashley Kennedy is part of a team that tests whether medications can help break the neural pathways that are part of the addicted brain.


Grappling with a Flu Pandemic

A cartoon of the "Spanish" flu microbe dressed as a Don Juan figure, from a Spanish newspaper of the time (1918-19).

When graduate student Ryan Davis, Spanish, started looking at the discourse around the 1918-19 flu pandemic in Spain, he found a fascinating example of a culture reaching for an established narrative to help make sense of a bewildering disease.


Social Ties and Effective Business Leadership

Corporate boards are supposed to supervise CEOs.  So what happens when board members and CEOs have social ties?  Byoung-Hyoun Hwang's dissertation research investigated the impact of social connections on leadership compensation and performance.

How Does Racial Segregation Influence Health?

It is common to hear about how genetic factors influence our risk for diseases.  But how do aspects of our social lives influence it?  Epidemiology graduate student Michael Kramer is investigating one case: racial, residential segregation and the risk for very pre-term births.

Making Blurry Pictures Sharp

An animated sequence shows how the information in many blurred images is used to generate one sharp image.

When an expensive or hard-to-obtain image turns out blurred or distorted, science can come to the rescue.  Mathematics graduate student Julianne Chung is researching ways to improve poor images pixel by pixel, using sophisticated reconstruction algorithms.


The Origins of Private Property?

A camp street lined with shops and small businesses.

Without a state to enforce them, how do property rights take root and develop?  Political Science graduate student Nadya Hajj Parks examined the process in Palestinian refugee camps.


How are Memories Made?

Remembering is central to being human, and memory abnormalities are present in ailments from autism to Alzheimers.  Neuroscience graduate student Eric Heuer investigates the neurological basis for creating memories.


Who is the "Healthy" Body?

Our conceptions of healthy human bodies often reflect unexamined assumptions about what is normal. Graduate student Moya Bailey asks what happens when these conceptions encounter real human bodies in the context of medical care.

How Does TB Resist Drugs?

Mycobacterium tuberculosis -- the microbe that causes TB (photo courtesy of the CDC).
Tuberculosis is one of the world's deadliest diseases, and the emergence of drug-resistant strains is a grave threat.  Analise Zaunbrecher, a graduate student in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, works with CDC scientists to understand how resistance develops.

The Past Comes Alive

Louise Thompson Patterson and Langston Hughes during their 1932 trip to the Soviet Union.
One of Emory's archival collections in African-American history and culture brought the Harlem Rennaissance alive for Guirdex Massé, a second year student in the English program.  Working with original documents revealed the personal experiences of a dynamic cultural moment.

This is where we tell you about ...

... the extraordinary and exciting work of Emory graduate students. 

Visit this page to read about graduate students at all stages and from all parts of the Graduate School -- and occationally about other stories we want to place front and center.  The stories will change about once a month.