DUKE STARS — David Needham
 Name: David Needham
Years of service: 20
Title: Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science, Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Department: Pratt School of Engineering
David Needham didn't know much about the game of basketball when he came to Duke, but it didn't take him long to become part of the tradition.
During his first week at Duke as a new assistant professor in 1987, Needham went to a men's basketball game at Cameron, courtesy of another more senior professor who had tickets. Needham, who'd played sports in his native England for teams that rarely had coaches, much less TV cameras and "dancing girls" as he called the cheerleaders, was impressed with the hoopla. When he learned that tickets were nearly impossible to acquire, his creativity kicked in.
He joined the student band.
Needham played trumpet in the band for seven years and watched Duke basketball greats from Quin Snyder to Grant Hill.
"I took quite a bit of ribbing when I first showed up for a meeting with my department chair carrying my band uniform — a blue waistcoat with the big
'D' on it," Needham said.
Needham applies that same creativity to his academic role in the department of mechanical engineering and material science. He said that Duke has allowed him the latitude to explore and excel in the classroom and in his research, a balance that can be difficult to achieve in academia.
A chemist with postdoctoral training in lipid membranes, Needham discovered a new way to deliver cancer-fighting drugs to a tumor that minimizes the toxic effect on healthy tissues. The cancer treatment, liposome-hyperthermia therapy, is now in clinical trials for breast cancer at Duke and is poised to move to more advanced testing in liver cancer.
With no formal study in education, Needham developed an interpersonal approach to teaching to help foster learning. Part of this approach includes "counseling" sessions, where groups of students can discuss science and engineering with Needham. Already this semester he has met with each of his 61 students at least twice and he is working on research projects with17 undergraduates through independent study.
"I spend all this time with students because it is essential for learning and because the students at Duke are such a pleasure to work with," said Needham, whose classes attract a spectrum of students from first-year undergraduates to graduate level, all in the same classroom.
Needham said he is appreciative of the autonomy he's had at Duke — from his approach to facilitated learning, to being able to develop and test his cancer treatment, to being a member of the student band. Because of the increasing academic demands, Needham had to hang up the trumpet and blue waistcoat, but he still finds an outlet for his creative side as a drummer in a local pop/rock band, called "down by avalon."
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