What Our Students Do

  • Business Savvy, Environmentally Conscious Degree Opportunity

    Each year, the Master of Engineering Management Program (MEMP) builds on the foundation that an undergraduate degree in engineering or science has established. The program uses a combination of core business and management courses and technical electives to develop a skill set that includes advanced technical knowledge along with a strong understanding of management and business. In recent years, the MEMP has seen an increasing number of students looking to add another component to the degree; ...
  • MEMP Student Gets Face Time with Warren Buffett

    by Bridget Fletcher When Pratik Shah, a Master of Engineering Management student from Aurangabad, India joined the Duke Investment Club, he expected to meet other students with a similar interest in investing and finance and to get some valuable networking opportunities. He did not expect a lunch meeting with Warren Buffett. More than 150 students from Duke, the University of Tennessee, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were extended an invitation to dine with Warren Buffett in ...
  • Gavin Awarded for Undergraduate Teaching

    By Richard Merritt Humor is often one of the telling characteristics of an effective and respected teacher, and from all accounts, Henri Gavin, associate professor of civil engineering, can be a pretty funny guy. "He always tries to crack jokes about things, especially when it seems the class isn't paying attention well enough," said Ian Cassidy, who took two Gavin classes and graduated this spring with a degree in civil engineering. "I remember in one class, most ...
  • Lee Pearson Commencement Speech 2008

    Welcome mothers and happy Mother's Day, thank you for all that you do. Welcome fathers thanks for your part in making Mother's Day possible. Welcome Pratt Class of 2008. It has been a long road and we have reached the end of this journey in what seems like much less time than anticipated. Although our parents were certainly focused on getting to the destination on time and on budget, we were more focused on what interesting ...
  • Gift to Drive Better Understanding of Uncertainty Analysis

    DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering has received a gift of $5 million from an anonymous donor to establish a new undergraduate curriculum that will encourage students to think critically about problems that lack obvious solutions, like those they will encounter after graduation, President Richard H. Brodhead announced Wednesday. The planned curriculum will be open to undergraduates from all majors. "Duke's strategic plan, 'Making a Difference,' calls for investments in programs that help students ...
  • Fulbright Winners -- 2008

    Pratt Engineering Undergraduate Fellow Kerry Costello was named as a Fulbright Scholars for 2008-2009. The program supports one year of research at an institution outside the United States. Costello, a graduating senior and a native of Havertown, Penn., will be spending a year in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She will be studying at Vrije Universiteit, a university with more than 2,000 faculty members and researchers and a student body of more than 18,000. While at Duke, she ...
  • Noia wins Intel Foundation/Semiconductor Research Corp. Education Alliance Master's Scholarship.

    Pratt senior Brandon Noia has been awarded an Intel Foundation/Semiconductor Research Corp. Education Alliance Master's Scholarship. The two-year award provides tuition and fees, a $2,060 monthly stipend and an annual gift of $2,000 to the ECE department. Noia will study under ECE Professor Krish Chakrabarty.
  • Clare Boothe Luce Fellows Two Years Later

    Two years after receiving prestigious fellowships designed to support women scientists, three Pratt graduate students are well into their research with such diverse projects as brain-computer interfaces, nanoparticle exposures and a new method for breast cancer screening. In 2006, Katie Hedlund, Christine Robichaud and Christina Shafer were named Clare Boothe Luce Fellows. The fellowship program is the largest such private program for women studying science, mathematics or engineering. More than 1,500 women scientists have received support ...
  • Justin Jaworski -- 2008 Student Dean's Mentoring Award Winnner

    Justin Jaworski exemplifies the common belief that music and mathematics are not as distinct as they might appear on the surface. The fourth-year graduate student whose interests lie in studying the phenomenon of flutter in flexible objects such as airplane wings or bridges is also a consummate singer, having spent his undergraduate and graduate years singing with Chapel Choir, the Vespers Choir and the Duke University Chorale. "Music is a great combination of math and creativity, the ...
  • Duke Establishes Fellowship in Memory of Slain Graduate Student Abhijit Mahato

    DURHAM, N.C. -- In a meeting in Cary Saturday with leaders of the local Indian community, Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead announced the school has established a fellowship in memory of slain Duke graduate student Abhijit Mahato. The Abhijit Mahato Memorial Fellowship will provide financial support to a Duke international graduate student who is studying engineering, with preference given to a student from Mahato's native country of India. In a letter to Mahato's parents, Brodhead noted ...
  • Three Duke Students Awarded Goldwater Scholarships

    DURHAM, N.C. -- Three Duke University students have been selected for Goldwater Scholarships in science, mathematics and engineering for the 2008-09 academic year.They were among 321 sophomores and juniors chosen on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,035 mathematics, science and engineering students nationwide. Three of Duke's four nominees were selected. The award provides up to $7,500 toward annual tuition and expenses. Duke's Goldwater Scholars are Mark Hallen, Nicholas Patrick and engineering student Daniel ...
  • Living on $2 a Day

    When the severe drought in North Carolina precluded his scheduled monsoon rainwater project, Bob Malkin was forced to devise an alternative experience for his Design for the Developing World course. In an attempt to simulate on the personal level the experience of poverty, he asked his students to live on $2 a day, just as billions of people around the world do. While the costs of lodging, heat and other utilities were not included in the ...
  • Sebastian Liska, Pratt Fellow, Envisions Planes on Folded Wings

    Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellow Sebastian Liska imagines a day when airplane wings might fold themselves up during flight, not unlike the flexible wings of a bird. That quality would give planes the adaptability to complete complicated, multitask missions. "You might enhance fuel efficiency with extended wings and increase maneuverability with shorter wings," Liska said. "As you change configurations, the plane would become more stable and efficient for particular conditions." Liska is working in the laboratory of William ...
  • Focus on Engineering – Problems engineers solved

    For the second year in a row, Professor Ana Barros led a freshman year experience Focus course cluster called Engineering Frontiers. Open to both engineering and arts and sciences students, this year's cluster examines the planet earth as the life support system that sustains us. Taught by engineering professor David Needham, one course in the cluster, Engineering 32F is Mapping Engineering onto Biology. Focus students had the opportunity to join into Needham's ME/BME 265, Introduction to ...
  • Skee-ball and Pizza – the best way to end a semester

    Engineering students in Professor Linda Franzoni's Fall 2007 ME 141 Mechanical Design course indulged in pizza and a no-holds-barred demonstration of their engineering design skills in an end-of-semester skee-ball contest. The players, however, were robotic ball launchers designed by student teams during the course. For this skee ball competition, players had to launch small plastic balls into a nested series of rings set at an incline. (Normally, skee ball is a bit like bowling where a ...
  • Questions about this page? Contact:

    Deborah Hill, Director of Communications, 415 Teer Engineering Building, 919-660-8403, dahill@duke.edu