Class of 2024
Nakayama Scholar
Hometown: Princeton, New Jersey
Majors: Biology; Global Health
Ronit Sethi is passionate about tackling the mental health and neurodegenerative disease burden in the US through clinical research, advocacy, and direct patient service. At Duke, he is currently involved in research on ALS-frontotemporal dementia at the ElMallah Lab, works on the Coping Together Bass Connections team to culturally adapt a family resilience intervention for Latinx immigrant populations, and is an avid counselor and operations coordinator for Camp Kesem, which supports children affected by a parent’s cancer. Throughout his time at Duke, Ronit worked on several intervention and policy projects. At the Duke Global Health Institute, he collaborated on a project team under Dr. Sumedha Ariely to analyze mental health outcomes among orphaned children in India and provide interventional recommendations. As a Huang Fellow at the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health, he conducted a review on global health financing in low- and middle-income countries. These experiences have given him an appreciation for the interplay between research, policy, and service in supporting human health. He plans to integrate these components in his journey towards medicine and hopes to use his experiences and knowledge to change the status quo around brain disorders.