About Duke University

Andrew Hilton is an Associate Professor of the Practice in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering, where he has been teaching since 2012. Before joining Duke, he worked as an advisory engineer at IBM. One of the key courses he teaches is ECE 551, an intensive introduction to programming designed to equip graduate students with no prior experience to master programming and tackle advanced courses. In 2015, Professor Hilton received the Klein Family Distinguished Teaching Award for his excellence in teaching. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Anne Pusey is Professor Emerita of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University. She holds a BA from Oxford University and a PhD from Stanford University. Throughout her career, she has dedicated much of her research to studying the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park, Tanzania, and spent 11 years researching the lions of the Serengeti. Her journey began in 1970 as a research assistant for Jane Goodall, followed by five years at Gombe collecting data for her dissertation on adolescent chimpanzee behavior. Pusey spent 26 years as a Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota, where she founded the Jane Goodall Institute’s Center for Primate Studies. This center archived and digitized data from the long-running Gombe chimpanzee study. After joining Duke in 2010, she established the Jane Goodall Institute Research Center, continuing this important work. Pusey has mentored numerous graduate students focused on Gombe chimpanzees and remains an active visitor to the research site. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Animal Behavior Society, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, and has authored over 150 publications on various aspects of chimpanzee behavior and biology.

David T. Robinson is a Professor of Finance and the J. Rex Fuqua Distinguished Professor of International Management at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, as well as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a globally recognized authority in private equity, venture capital, and entrepreneurial finance. His research has been published in leading academic journals in finance and economics, and his insights have been highlighted in prominent media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and The Economist.

Dale Purves holds the position of Geller Professor of Neurobiology at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, along with additional appointments in the Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences and the Department of Philosophy at Duke University. He earned his B.A. from Yale University in 1960 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1964. Following further clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital, serving as a Peace Corps physician, and completing postdoctoral training at Harvard and University College London, he joined the faculty at Washington University School of Medicine in 1973. In 1990, he came to Duke as the founding chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Duke Medical Center and later served as Director of Duke's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience from 2003 to 2009. He also directed the Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders Program at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore from 2009 to 2013.