Jenny Tung
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Jenny Tung (Jĕn-nē tŏng) is an evolutionary anthropologist and geneticist. She is Director of the Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution at the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (german: Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, shortened to MPI EVA) is a research institute based in Leipzig, Germany, that was founded in 1997. It is part of the Max Plan ...
in Leipzig, Germany, and a Visiting Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology at
Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
. In 2019, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 2024, she was elected a member of the United States
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
. Tung co-directs the
Amboseli Baboon Research Project The Amboseli Baboon Project is a long-term, individual-based research project on yellow baboons (''Papio cynocephalus'') in the Amboseli basin of southern Kenya. Founded in 1971, it is one of the longest-running studies of a wild primate in the wor ...
, a long-term study of wild baboons in Kenya.


Personal life

Tung’s mother and father immigrated to the United States from Taiwan and moved to Maryland and then to Delaware where they had Tung and her older sister, Wenny. Tung’s father was a chemical engineer for
DuPont DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...
, an American chemical company, and her mother was a teacher prior to their coming to the United States. Upon starting her undergraduate career at
Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
, Tung studied biology with the intent to become a physician, but she discovered her passion lay more in evolutionary biology after a taking a course on forging social ideals during her first semester.


Education

Tung earned a bachelor's degree in 2003 from
Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
. She remained at Duke for her graduate studies, obtaining a PhD in 2010. After a
postdoc A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...
at the University of Chicago, she came back to Duke University to work as a professor in the field of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology. Tung founded the Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution at the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (german: Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, shortened to MPI EVA) is a research institute based in Leipzig, Germany, that was founded in 1997. It is part of the Max Plan ...
in 2022.


Research

Her research is helping to provide a better understanding for how health, lifespans, and fitness are all affected by social and environmental stressors. Tung's research is focused on primates, but also extends to other social mammals. 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. In a different study, she researched the same idea, but in more competitive environments such as wild
meerkat MeerKAT, originally the Karoo Array Telescope, is a radio telescope consisting of 64 antennas in the Meerkat National Park, in the Northern Cape of South Africa. In 2003, South Africa submitted an expression of interest to host the Square Kilom ...
s. 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. 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.


Awards

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. The University of Chicago offered her the Chicago Fellows Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 2010. Recipients of the Chicago Fellows Post-Doctoral Fellowship receive an annual stipend as well as research funding. She was nominated for the Duke Postdoctoral Mentoring Award in 2013 from Duke University. The National Academy of Sciences and the Kavli Foundation’s international Kavli Frontiers of Science program offered Tung the opportunity to become a Kavli Fellow in 2015. 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. In 2016, Tung received the Sloan Research Fellowship in the field on Computational & Evolutionary Molecular Biology which promoted continuation of her research. Science News listed Tung on the ten scientists to watch list in 2018 for the up-and-coming minds of the natural sciences. Tung was awarded the 2019 MacArthur Fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation, which awarded her with $625,000.


References


External links


Laboratory website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tung, Jenny Duke University alumni Duke University faculty Living people MacArthur Fellows Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) American geneticists American women geneticists American anthropologists American women anthropologists American women academics 21st-century American women American people of Chinese descent Scientists from Delaware Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences