This summer, I had the opportunity to work for Clark Construction, a general contractor in DC. I spent the month of June working remotely from my home in Maryland. During the month of July, I was able to come to work in DC. During my time at Clark, I was able to work with the sustainability department in order to do materials tracking for a $300M surgical pavilion to be opened in 2023. In addition, I was able to perform some work tracking volatile organic compounds to be used inside the structure. LEED requirements are a… read more about Kemunto Okindo '21 - Clark Construction General Contractor (Summer 2020) »
This summer, I interned with Duke Management Company, which manages the University’s 8.6-billion-dollar endowment, as a part of the Data+ program. We explored how artificial intelligence can be used to support the investment office and developed a cost optimization tool for financing charges paid to prime brokers. For the latter half of summer, I worked closely with the Private Investments team and analyzed DUMAC’s venture capital investments from the last 20 years. I also spent my summer conducting research about… read more about Priya Parkash '22 - Duke Management Company Internship & Research (Summer 2020) »
This summer, I took a Duke ECE course in mobile app development and also had an internship through the Duke Phoenix Project where I was also doing mobile app development. In order to develop mobile iOS applications, I had to develop them on a mac, so I used my enrichment funds to purchase one. Through the mobile app development course, I built a few apps in Swift that were largely centered around schedule/database management and ran on both iOS and watchOS. It was a very fun course and I got to learn a lot about… read more about Michael Williams '21 - Duke Phoenix Project Internship (Summer 2020) »
My last memory of Duke right before all campus activities shut down and students returned home is a happy one. I was spending Spring Break with my fellow Spring Breakthrough Participants and we were having the most wonderful time volunteering at the puppy kindergarten, learning about canine cognition with Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, and even visiting a goat farm and the NC Zoo. The pandemic that created chaos across the world put me in an initial state of despair, confusion and hopelessness when I realized that the… read more about Simran Sokhi ’22 – Research Internship at Duke-NUS, Singapore (Summer 2020) »
This summer, I had an amazing opportunity to work as an intern for the National Weather Service through NOAA. During my 10-week internship, I conducted my own research project under the guidance of the amazing Dr. Peter Roohr and Wendy Marie Thomas. This research worked to evaluate the role of satellite imagery in the forecasting and operational decisions of wildfires, and the project was conducted as a case study into the 2019 Kincade blaze. As an individual studying decision science and applied mathematics through Duke’s… read more about Madeleine "Mac" Gagne' '21 - National Weather Service Internship (Summer 2020)) »
This summer, I had the opportunity to serve as a Product Management Intern for Equinix, which is a leading data center and colocation services company. My internship was remote due to COVID-19, and I was initially uncertain about how this experience would be, but it was great. I was mentored under a smart, patient, and caring team, and my role within product management helped confirm my interest in it. As a product management intern, my role involved: Coordinating approval from cross-functional teams to develop two new… read more about Avery Brown '21 - Internship at Equinix (Summer 2020) »
My freshman year self signed up for the Duke Computer Science Department to try and purchase an entrance ticket on my behalf, so that I could attend the Grace Hopper Celebration: a conference that includes workshops, speakers and a career fair for around 20,000 women in tech. That is right, 20,000 women. I was very lucky, and the CS Department was able to buy me a ticket to attend GHC 2018. My sophomore year self boarded a flight to Houston and checked herself into a hotel room that would soon be the site of hours of… read more about Isabel Shiff '21 - Grace Hopper Celebration 2018 »
Over this past summer, I decided that it was time for a change of pace with regards to research. Instead of working on epigenetic research, I decided to work on researching a putative HIV vaccine through the Azoitei lab at Duke University last summer. The work I did over the summer focused around creating a library of mutations for DH270, an antibody that has been implicated in a potential HIV vaccine. Essentially, when a patient with HIV undergoes somatic hypermutation, DH270 can undergo a series of mutations that… read more about Michael Williams '21 - Researching HIV Vaccine Through Duke's Azoitei Lab (Summer 2019) »
This summer I spent time abroad in Valparaíso, Chile, studying Spanish, living in a homestay, and learning about the local culture. During the second part of the summer I worked in Dr. Alison Adcock's cognitive neuroscience lab. I studied curiosity and how it relates to time. My tasks were to run participants through our study, involving the guessing of drawings, and then to write code to interpret the results. Computer science is a new skill for me, and this summer I spent a large amount of time aquatinting myself to… read more about Eleanor George '21 - Chile & Dr. Adcock's Cognitive Neuroscience Lab (Summer 2019) »
This summer I participated in the DOmath research program for 8 weeks this summer, for which SPIRE helped assist me in my housing expenses. I worked on a project entitled “Dynamics of Floating Plates on Thin Films” with another student, Daniel Hwang, under the mentorship of Dr. Thomas Witelski, Dr. Jeffrey Wong, and Jingzhen Hu. In our work we considered the problem of a rigid plate floating on a viscous fluid film down an inclined plane. Many similar problems have been previously investigated, because these problems have… read more about Elliott Kauffman '22 - Duke Opportunities in Mathematics (DOmath) Program (Summer 2019) »
This summer, I worked as a technician in my lab for the third summer. We analyzed samples collected in the field using methanol extraction, ethanol extraction, and radioimmunoassay techniques to learn more about thyroid and glucocorticoid hormone concentrations in yellow baboons. Outside of lab, I was able to take advantage of my time in Durham and explore downtown! From farmers markets and trivia to peach picking, my summer was a lot of fun as well as a great learning experience! read more about Georgia Young '20 - Amboseli Baboon Research Project (Summer 2019) »
This summer, from early June to the end of July, I traveled to South Africa with DukeEngage. For the first week my cohort and I visited Johannesburg, where we visited multiple museums and other important sites to immerse ourselves in South African history and culture. It was great to witness how the fight for freedom played out in the country and how South Africans are moving forward and still fighting for the things they love and are passionate about. Afterward, we traveled to Cape Town where I spent the remaining seven… read more about Melissa White '21 - South Africa with DukeEngage (Summer 2019) »
This past summer, I had the pleasure of being a Media Tech Intern at NBCUniversal. I was a broadcast engineer working within the Operations and Technology department. In particular, my team consisted of engineering architects, making us in charge of developing technologies that assisted the production, media, and distribution engineers. Because we served a variety of engineers, I split my time between interning at NBCU’s New York City, NY and Englewood Cliffs, NJ locations. This allowed me to see a broader picture of how… read more about Cyan DeVeaux '20 - Media Tech Intern at NBCUniversal (Summer 2019) »
This summer I spent six weeks in Berlin, Germany taking classes for summer session two and interning. The program in which I participated in was called Duke Middle East in Europe. Our coursework focused on analyzing the political debates about Islam in Europe and about refugees and immigrants from the Middle East. We focused a lot on the impact of the Turkish population and culture in Germany in order to investigate the shifting political landscape of Turkish-German identities. In addition to that, the we learned a lot… read more about Qaiser Mahmood '21 - Duke Middle East in Europe (Summer 2019) »
This year I was fortunate enough to attend the National Conference of Undergraduate Research (NCUR) at Kennesaw State University. At the conference, I was able to converse with other undergraduate researchers about studies from nearly every discipline, from linguistic studies to cancer biology. Moreover, I was able to attend talks by various undergraduates on a wide variety of subjects. A few of my favorites include a discussion about the Drake Equation and its applications to biology, a lecture comparing musical techniques… read more about Emma Glenn '21 - 2019 National Conference of Undergraduate Research (NCUR) & Australia »
This past Spring (from April 10- 13), I had the opportunity to attend the 2019 National Council on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) conference in Atlanta, Georgia. I had this chance because of SPIRE funding. Through NCUR and SPIRE, I was able to present my research from the Boyce Lab on the "Role of SEC24 O-GlcNAcylation in COPII Trafficking". By showing my research, I was able to gain novel insights into my project through questions from faculty and peers from other institutions. Finally, I was able to see others… read more about Caitlin Lamb '21 - Presenting at the 2019 National Council on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) Conference »
This summer, I had the opportunity to work under Professor Sara Haravifard in her Quantum Materials Lab at Duke University, in the Department of Physics. The Haravifard group is mainly focused on investigating the emergent critical behavior in correlated electron systems, particularly, frustrated quantum spin compounds and high temperature superconductors. Over the 10 weeks that I spent doing research, I gained hands on experience with Prof. Haravifard’s lab equipment and mainly focused on the sample preparation of… read more about Hanna Mark '22 - Quantum Materials Lab (Summer 2019) »
I had an amazing time with Pratt in Costa Rica! It is a study abroad, so I took Spanish and BME271. The material was interesting, and the pace was thankfully pretty relaxed. Evenings were usually spent exploring San Jose with the group, and weekends were for the beaches and mountains! Costa Rica is a beautiful country, and it was rainy season in July. I came prepared for sweltering tropical weather, but it was surprisingly cool and breezy! My host family was incredibly kind and accommodating to us. The food was amazing,… read more about Juhyoung Lee '22 - Pratt in Costa Rica »
At the end of March 2019, I attended the Annual Convention for the National Society of Black Engineers in Detroit, Michigan. At the conference, I was able to participate in professional workshops about networking, resume building, reaching educational goals and more. It was also beneficial to hear from black professionals about navigating your first job after graduation and to meet the other 14,000 educators, students, young professionals and more at the conference. At the guidance of our deans, I was able to use SPIRE… read more about Kemunto Okindo '21 - National Society of Black Engineers Convention & Interning with the Southern Company »
This summer I had the opportunity to spend six weeks in Berlin—a city that thrives on volatility and capriciousness. On the Duke in Berlin summer program, I took a German class and an Economics class, both of which facilitated my cultural immersion into Berlin as I went around the city talking in German and taking in its history, candor, and diversity. . My economics class examined the economics of the Energiewende allowing me to explore the intersection of energy, politics, and finance. The accessibility of multicultural… read more about Priya Parkash '22 - Duke in Berlin & Corporate Research Intern (Summer 2019) »
This year, I attended hands-on sessions on how finding stories in data sets at the National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting conference. I was able to network and meet fellow investigative journalists while also learning advanced techniques in creating graphics. For my environmental investigative journalism internship in Durban, South Africa over the summer, I applied all of these skills I learned from NICAR and used those resources to construct a investigative, multimedia article that reported on the impacts of… read more about Chen Chen '21 - Attending NICAR & Research in Dr. Ruth Day's Memory for Movement lab »
This summer, I was fortunate enough to carry out the position of a Research Intern at an African wild dog conservation trust in Botswana. I spent two months living in a tent in the bush carrying out various tasks associated with the trust’s mission. No two days were the same, but a typical field day would go something like this: after waking up with the sun, we would gather our field gear and head out in one of the trusty land rovers that were affectionately named Worm, Mantis, and Kubu. We’d follow the coordinates sent to… read more about Annabella Helman '21 - Research Intern at an African wild dog conservation trust in Botswana (Summer 2019) »
This summer, I had the opportunity to tackle research in two different domains: academia and the industrial sector. This summer not only allowed me to better understand these two different perspectives on research but gave me insight into the overlap between them. By pursuing my personal research project with the Duke Lemur Lab, I was able to understand the independence of conducting my own research and serving as a project lead. At the beginning of the summer, I had proposed my work to the Atlanta Primate Language… read more about Madeleine "Mac" Gagne' '21 - Duke Lemur Lab Research Project (Summer 2019) »
This summer, I spent 9 weeks at the Duke-NUS Medical School doing what I love most: research. I am extremely grateful to Dr David Virshup, MD, Professor of Pediatrics at Duke and Director of the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Programme at Duke-NUS, for providing me with the opportunity to learn from and contribute to his lab. The Virshup Lab focuses primarily on the Wnt signaling pathway, which is a critical cell signaling pathway present in all animals and regulates cell metabolism and proliferation. Mutations in this… read more about Simran Sokhi ’22 – Research Internship at Duke-NUS, Singapore »
This summer I was a part of the Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Fellowship (B-SURF). This was an 8-week program here at Duke that allowed us to stay on campus and work at a biology lab. I worked in the Sanders Lab in the Neurology Department. The Sanders Lab focuses on Parkinson’s Disease (PD), specifically that relating to mitochondrial DNA damage. I spent this summer learning many lab skills. I have learned proper cell culture technique, how to collect protein, how to quantify protein, how to run, image, and… read more about Shannon Houser '22 - Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Fellowship (Summer 2019) »
Over the summer from June 6 to July 31, I participated in Duke Engage Costa Rica, a program focused on conversation and reforestation in the Bell Bird Biological Corridor along the country’s Pacific slope. The primary goals of this program were to restore habitat and connect sections of rainforest by planting a variety of tree species indigenous to the region on various ranches and farms. The trees were only 1 year old seedlings, so the process of planting was meticulous and methodical, but worthwhile. Altogether, my group… read more about Austin Camp '21 - Duke Engage Costa Rica (Summer 2019) »
As soon as I returned home from the school year, I began preparing for a two-month, global adventure. I was lucky enough to be accepted into both Duke in Rome and Duke in Australia, study-abroad commitments that required me to be international from May 14th until July 20th. Now, with a camera roll full of fun and a jet-lagged body from just reflecting on it all, to say that I learned a lot would be an understatement! Landing in Fiumicino, I was finally hit with the reality that I would be in Italy for a full month. The… read more about Rebecca Schmitt '21 - Duke in Rome & Australia »
During the summer of 2018, I spent my time in Chicago as a product management intern for Motorola Solutions Inc. in the Software Enterprise group. It was my first time interning within the tech industry, which made it an incredibly valuable experience. My main project was to work with my manager on planning a large-scale end-to-end demo that crafted a narrative surrounding many of Motorola Solutions’ offerings. The nature of this project and product management enabled me to interact with a variety of people across the… read more about Cyan DeVeaux '20 - Product Management Intern for Motorola Solutions Inc. »
This summer, I took physics at UNC-Chapel Hill and traveled to Kenya with my lab, the Alberts Lab. The Alberts Lab is part of the Amboseli Baboon Research Project based in Amboseli National Park in Kenya. While in the park under the guidance of Susan Alberts, I lived at the field site and got to experience first-hand what field work (and being a field researcher) is like. I also spent time at the Institute for Primate Research in Nairobi, and learned new lab techniques while shadowing some of the researchers there. read more about Georgia Young '20 - Field Research in Kenya »
This summer I had a pretty sweet opportunity to continue my research from the spring semester in Dr. Boyce’s Lab through Duke’s Biological Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program (B-SURF). Through B-SURF, I was able to continue to work full-time with Brittany on a single sugar modification’s (O-GlcNAcylation) role on SEC24D (a protein that has ties with the human disease, Osteogenesis imperfecta). In addition to researching, I learned to expand my network. For instance, the program started by emphasizing the… read more about Caitlin Lamb '21 - Duke's B-SURF »