Duke University - Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

Undergraduate Research

From their first year, Duke undergraduates enjoy opportunities to engage in original research that help them develop essential intellectual skills, mentored by world-class faculty.

The Undergraduate Research Support Office identifies grants and job opportunities for undergraduate projects and summer programs. Summer opportunities for first-, second-, and third-year students are offered through the Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program, the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, the Pratt School of Engineering, and a variety of departmental programs.

Graduate Research

Duke University Graduate School strives to promote responsible research and academic integrity by:

  • engaging in strategic planning on RCR education
  • providing training on RCR topics
  • developing RCR educational resources
  • evaluating RCR educational programs, and
  • presenting key findings to the scholarly community.

RCR training is a formal requirement of the Ph.D. degree in every department and program of study at Duke. This reflects our expectation that every doctoral candidate will be well qualified to address the growing ethical challenges that arise when teaching or conducting research.

If you're looking for...

More than 50% of Duke undergrads complete faculty-mentored research projects. Find out why research is so popular in a quick roundup of Duke's 2011 undergraduate research showcase.

    • Tue Jan 29
    • Designing Microbial “Factories” Rationally
    • By Pranali Dalvi Using microbes to manufacture chemicals is starting to be cheaper and greener than traditional chemistry. And their feedstock is sugar, not oil. On Friday, Dr. Michael Lynch spoke to an engaged audience about how microbes have ushered in a new era in metabolic and genetic engineering. Lynch is the co-founder and CSO of OPX Biotechnologies, [...]
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    • Wed Jan 23
    • Cooking up chemistry with candy
    • By Ashley Yeager Note: This is the first in a four-part, monthly series that will give readers recipes that they can try in their kitchen and also learn a little chemistry and physics along the way. A dozen freshmen pull on pieces of fresh, soft toffee, popping the candy into their mouths and licking it [...]
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    • Fri Jan 18
    • What makes humans so unique?
    • By Pranali Dalvi Human and chimpanzees are very similar genetically despite the stark differences in their outward appearances. So it must be just a very small portion of human genes that are responsible for everything from our upright posture to our ability to sing. What makes humans so unique? On Jan. 14, Duke Professor of [...]
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    • Fri Jan 18
    • Grad Student Sees Yawning Gap in Animal Welfare
    • by Ashley Mooney Sometimes a middle-school nickname becomes a career. Graduate student Jingzhi Tan, yawned loudly during a quiet class in middle school in China, garnering the nickname Hippo. So now he’s at Duke, studying yawning behaviors in bonobos. So-called ‘contagious yawning’ has been found in many species besides humans and other great apes, including [...]
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    • Sat Jan 12
    • A Call For Action: Genetic Testing Before Prescriptions
    • By Prachiti Dalvi Codeine is an opioid pain medication; but if you are a poor metabolizer of a particular enzyme (CYP2D6), you will experience no pain relief from this drug. However, if your doctor could administer something called pharmacogenetic testing, she would know to simply give you morphine (an active metabolite of codeine) instead. For [...]
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    • Mon Dec 17
    • Not Swimming with Spinners
    • By Ashley Yeager Waianae, HI - Pet a dolphin for me, my sister texted as I stepped onto a catamaran in West Oahu. I didn't have the heart to tell her that is exactly what I would NOT be doing, under any circumstances. I have to admit that a little later, as a pod of [...]
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    • Fri Dec 14
    • Deeper voice still wins, even in “feminine” leadership roles
    • By Ashley Yeager A lower pitched voice gets more votes — even in elections for stereotypically feminine roles, such as for president of the Parent-Teacher Association or member of the School Board, a new Duke study shows. “These findings are somewhat surprising,” said University of Miami political scientist Casey Klofstad, co-author on the study. He [...]
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    • Fri Dec 14
    • ‘Hoot-Dash Display’ Brings the Chicks In
    • Guest Post by Robin A. Smith, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) Deep in the scrublands of Keoladeo National Park in northwest India, one thing was hard for biologist Jessica Yorzinski to ignore: It wasn't the heat. It wasn't the jackals. It was the squawks of peacocks in the throes of passion. From behind the trees [...]
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    • Thu Dec 13
    • Higgs Hunters Seeing Double
    • By Ashley Yeager Scientists searching for the Higgs boson on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva are reporting small discrepancies from the two main channels they use to look for the particle. With these channels - the decay of a Higgs to two light particles (photons) or to two Z bosons - [...]
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    • Thu Dec 13
    • An Evening with Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee
    • By Pranali Dalvi Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells. We take this idea for granted today, but the definition of cancer evaded us for many years. In a talk on on Dec. 6, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, physician, and cancer researcher Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, took his audience on a journey through the archives of medicine [...]
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