Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Design by Shaun King/Trinity Communications In 1975, when Craig Asplund became one of the first Duke students to graduate with a computer science major, the entire state of North Carolina had less computing power than the phone in your pocket today. Jian Pei, Arthur S. Pearse Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and department chair, gives the opening speech at Duke Computer Science's 50th anniversary celebration event. (Kevin Seifert)… read more » about Pushing Boundaries and Creating History: 50 years of Computer Science at Duke
Majoring in Neuroscience with minors in Chemistry and Visual & Media Studies and on the pre-med track, Stephany Perez-Sanchez knew she wanted to pursue a career in medicine, all thanks to a high-school psychology course. “My favorite unit in that class was neuroanatomy,” the junior explains. “I was so fascinated by the brain and how this structure controls all our functions.” She brought her cerebral fascination to Duke and began her research in earnest during the summer of 2022 in the Huang Fellows Program. Focusing… read more » about Future Physician Discovers Intersections Between Media and Science
Black Americans have long described mass incarceration as a “generational curse” bedeviling impoverished communities. New research by a Duke graduate student drives that point home with empirical evidence. Garrett Baker demonstrates how the children of imprisoned parents — particularly since the era of mass incarceration — have lower aspirations and expectations about their future lives as adults. It’s a mindset that thwarts their upward mobility, he says. “Young people who grow up with a father in jail or prison don’t… read more » about The ‘Generational Curse’ Holding Back Children of Incarcerated Fathers
DURHAM, NC – Curiosity paradoxically increases people’s eagerness and patience for an answer, finds a new study by Duke neuroscientists. The research might help teachers and students alike by describing a side of curiosity that encourages us to stay engaged instead of seeking immediate relief. Die-hard fans of the Hulu show, "The Bear" are left on the edge of their seats each Sunday, wondering what's going to happen in the scrappy Chicago hotdog shop next week. But new research from neuroscientists at Duke University… read more » about What an Animated Taco Reveals About Curiosity and Patience
read more » about New NC District Maps Show Signs of Partisan Gerrymandering, According to Duke Team
Want to have more productive conversations on social media? Maybe a chatbot can help. New research from Duke sociologist Christopher Bail and a team of Brigham Young University colleagues used artificial intelligence to intervene and improve conversations online. The team built an AI chat assistant to mediate conversations between two people on opposite sides of the ongoing gun control debate. When one participant was about to send a message, the chat assistant – or ‘chatbot’ – would rephrase the language, with evidence-… read more » about Bridging Political Divides With Artificial Intelligence
For a guy who high-jumped 6-foot-8 in high school and is a candidate for the Rhodes, Marshall and Mitchell scholarships in his senior year at Duke, an all-expense-paid trip to Washington DC for three days may not seem like a big deal. But for Danny Collins, 22, this could be yet another launching pad. Next week, Collins will be among the finalists in the Collegiate Inventors Competition, hosted by the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The winners take away cash prizes and an accelerated patent application to the US Patent… read more » about Duke Senior Launches Himself Toward Big Rewards
DURHAM, N.C. -- If you’ve seen some of the images of space taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, or its predecessor the Hubble, you may have marveled at glimpsing distant galaxies for the first time, or planets outside the solar system, or beholding the births and deaths of stars. But two Duke scientists are already looking past that. They are part of the plans for NASA’s next big space telescope. While the Webb and the Hubble are good at zeroing in on small patches of sky, they say, this next… read more » about Taking a Larger View of the Universe
Tom Zhang (they/them) is Duke Theater Studies’ Artist-in-Residence for the 2023-2024 academic year. Tom is an actor and theater-maker dedicated to creating performances that use humor to explore race relations and Asian American identity. As an actor, singer and writer, their works focus on telling stories typically left out of mainstream entertainment. Tom graduated from the California Institute of the Arts with a Master of Fine Arts in Acting, and is coming to Duke from Emory University, where they were an instructor… read more » about Artist-in-Residence Wants You to Discover Everyone’s Issues, Including Your Own
DURHAM, N.C. -- This summer, Duke biology Ph.D. student Elise Paietta traveled some 9,000 miles from North Carolina to the lowland rainforests of Madagascar, east of southern Africa. Her mission: virus hunting. Every day for three weeks she crawled out of her tent, pulled on her rubber boots and joined a team of researchers and veterinarians for a trek into Manombo Special Reserve, a wildlife reserve spanning some 20 square miles on the island’s southeastern coast. As they ventured into the forest, Paietta… read more » about Looking for Viral Threats in the Era of Climate Change