User:CPandCP/Jenny Tung

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Jenny Tung (Jĕn-nē tŏng) is an assistant professor and researcher at Duke university within the field of evolutionary anthropology as well as biology. She has been awarded with multiple fellowships and grants, notably the MacArthur fellowship in 2019.

Jenny Tung[edit]

Personal Life[edit]

Tung’s mother and father immigrated to the United States from China and moved to Delaware where they had Tung and her older sister. Tung’s father was a chemical engineer for DuPont, an American chemical company[1], and her other was a teacher prior to coming to the United States.[2] Prior to going to Duke University, Tung studied biology with the intent to become a physician, but she discovered her passion for science over medicine.[2] Tung is married to Sayan Mukherjee, a Duke University Professor of Statistical Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science[3].[4]

Education[edit]

She attended Duke University for her bachelor of science in 2003, as well as her Ph.D. in 2010. After her post-doctorate at the University of Chicago, she came back to Duke University to work as an associate professor in the field of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology.[5]

Research[edit]

Two yellow baboons (Papio cynocephalus), the species from the study found in Amboseli.

Her research is helping to provide a better understanding for how health, lifespans, and fitness are all affected by social and environmental stressors.[6] Tung focused her early research on primates, but is now looking to further her research with meerkats to continue to study the social interactions among them and link those interactions to other aspects of research. [5] Tung discovered that the social environment of primates doesn’t just influence the physical health and behavior of an individual, but also affects gene regulation.[7] In a different study, she researched the same idea, but in more competitive environments such as wild meerkats.[7] She also looked into how the different social environments affected the rest of the individual's life in terms of: social status, relationships with others, and behavior.[7] She has conducted and contributed to many other projects. Jenny Tung's most cited paper according to Google Scholar is "Social environment is associated with gene regulatory variation in the rhesus macaque immune system".  Published in 2012, the paper has been cited by fields ranging from human genomics to bioethics. [8]

Awards[edit]

Award Name Year Institution
Primate Genomics Initiative Graduate Student Fellowship [2] 2009 Duke University
Katherine Goodman Stern Dissertation Year Fellowship [2] 2009 Duke Graduate Program
Chicago Fellows Post-Doctoral Fellowship[2] 2010 University of Chicago
Nomiated for Duke Postdoctoral Mentoring Award[2] 2013 Duke University
Sloan Research Fellows[9] 2016 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Macarthurs Fellows Program[5] 2019 MacArthurs Fellowship

Over the years, Tung has received multiple awards and recognitions for her research. In 2009, Tung received the Primate Genomics Initiative Graduate Student Fellowship from Duke University, and the Katherine Goodman Stern Dissertation Year Fellowship from Duke University, which provides recipients with tuition and fee coverage, as well as an annual stipend.[2][10][11] The University of Chicago offered her the Chicago Fellows Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 2010.[2] Recipients of the Chicago Fellows Post-Doctoral Fellowship receive an annual stipend as well as research funding.[12] She was nominated for the Duke Postdoctoral Mentoring Award in 2013 from Duke University.[10] The National Academy of Sciences and the Kavli Foundation’s international Kavli Frontiers of Science program[13] offered Tung the opportunity to become a Kavli Fellow in 2015.[2] The Kavli Fellows present at their annual Science symposia to network and present their research and is offered to scientists under the age of forty-five.[13] In 2016, Tung received the Sloan Research Fellowship in the field on Computational & Evolutionary Molecular Biology which promoted continuation of her research.[9] Science News listed Tung on the ten scientists to watch list in 2018 for the up-and-coming minds of the natural sciences.[14] Tung was awarded the 2019 Macarthur Fellowship from the Macarthur Foundation, which awarded her with $625,000. [2][5]


  1. ^ "DuPont", Wikipedia, 2020-02-23, retrieved 2020-02-25
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "User account | NewsBank". infoweb.newsbank.com. Retrieved 2020-02-25. Cite error: The named reference ":1" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Sayan Mukherjee | Department of Mathematics". math.duke.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-25.
  4. ^ "Jenny Tung: Ready to Test Stress". today.duke.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-25.
  5. ^ a b c d "Jenny Tung - MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2020-02-25.
  6. ^ "Baboon Sexes Differ in How Social Status Gets 'Under the Skin'". today.duke.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-25.
  7. ^ a b c "http://www.tung-lab.org/research.html". www.tung-lab.org. Retrieved 2020-04-03. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  8. ^ "Jenny Tung - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2020-02-25.
  9. ^ a b "Past Fellows". sloan.org. Retrieved 2020-02-25.
  10. ^ a b "Jenny Tung | Evolutionary Anthropology". evolutionaryanthropology.duke.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-26.
  11. ^ "Katherine Goodman Stern Fellowship | Duke Graduate School". gradschool.duke.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-26.
  12. ^ "Chicago Fellows". biologicalsciences.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-26.
  13. ^ a b "2015 Kavli Fellows - News Release". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2020-02-26.
  14. ^ "The SN 10: These scientists defy limits to tackle big problems". Science News. 2018-09-26. Retrieved 2020-02-25.