Duke alumnus Aaron Sandel is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He writes from Ngogo, in the center of Kibale National Park in Uganda, home to 200 chimpanzees, the subjects of his dissertation. A National Geographic Young Explorers grant in 2013 got him through the angst of finalizing a dissertation project. Now, he studies angst, or at least the closest thing to it: friendship and the transition to adulthood in male chimpanzees. When he's not focused on following a chimpanzee, his forest daydreams include opening a vegan burrito restaurant in a rural Ugandan village and making a documentary about an old fig tree.
Follow Aaron's blog on National Geographic: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/author/asandel/
Department of Evolutionary Anthropology
