PRATT Fellows News

  • April 2, 2008

    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 ...
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  • January 30, 2008

    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 ...
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  • January 22, 2008

    Pratt Fellow Aims for Quieter Flying Time

    As a Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellow, Chelsea He is working on a project designed to deliver more peace and quiet to people traveling by air in the future. She is examining the structural acoustics of airplanes and experimenting with materials that might dampen the racket that results from the vibration of the aircraft, the engine and the flow of air over planes. "I've always been interested in aerospace and aerodynamics and finding a way to achieve ...
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  • January 22, 2008

    Pratt Fellow Levy Develops Tools for Better Disease and Chemical Detection

    As a Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellow in the laboratory of J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Nan Marie Jokerst, Melissa Levy is a member of a team designing a hand-held "lab on a chip" capable of detecting the parasite responsible for malaria in a single drop of blood, among other applications. Such a malaria detector would have particular advantages in the developing world countries where people are most at risk for ...
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  • January 22, 2008

    Pratt Fellow Amoozegar Aims for Better Detection of Early Cancer

    Cyrus Amoozegar, a Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellow in the laboratory of Biomedical Engineering Professor Adam Wax, is working to improve a new, light-based method of early cancer detection. The technology, known as "angle-resolved low coherence interferometry" (a/LCI), can distinguish between cancer and non-cancer by measuring features within the cells that cover the outer surfaces of organs, where most cancers get their start. "It's superior because it is completely non-invasive," Amoozegar said. "Now, doctors have to take ...
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  • January 22, 2008

    Pratt Fellow Crabtree Seeks Understanding of Flaws in 'Smart Gels'

    Liza Crabtree, a Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellow and civil and environmental engineering major, is working to understand the flaws that can develop in so-called stimulus-responsive hydrogels. These 'smart gels,' which look essentially like Jello, can be made to undergo dramatic transformation in response to changes in their surroundings, including pH and temperature. Thanks to those unique abilities, hydrogels are now poised to become integral mechanical components and sensors in the increasingly tiny devices of the ...
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  • January 22, 2008

    Pratt Fellow Yamanaka Aims for Gene Therapy in a Pill and Career in Global Health

    Yvonne Yamanaka, a biomedical engineering major and Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellow, is developing a method for incorporating the genes encoding insulin into cells of the intestine, a promising new method for the treatment of diabetes. Unlike earlier approaches to gene therapy, which rely on viruses to insert new genes into cells, her research in the laboratory of Biomedical Engineering Professor Kam Leong aims to make gene therapies as easy as popping a pill. Such oral ...
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  • December 17, 2007

    Undergrads Enter 'Innovate or Die' Pedal-Powered Machine Contest

    Watch the video featuring a pedal-powered dirty water distiller designed and built by undergraduate engineers. A team of four undergraduate mechanical engineers have entered an "Innovate or Die" Pedal-Powered Machine contest on YouTube. Their video features a pedal-driven dirty water distillation device originally designed and built in the course ME150: Heat and Mass Transfer. The design project was inspired by the need for devices able to purify water in the case of a natural disaster, such ...
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  • December 5, 2007

    Moldy Human Cells, Water Pipes, 2-Watt Computers, and Concrete Machines: One Pratt Senior's Summer Extravaganza

    This article is part of Summer Stories, a special, online issue of Dukengineer Magazine, in which students wrote about their experiences in the Summer of 2007 during their time away from Duke. by Lee Pearson, BME/CEE '08 "Viva Peeeruuu!" the perfect stranger yelled to me with Pisco on his breath as he threw his arm around my back and we proceeded to walk towards the concert stage. It was July 27th, the night before the Independence Day ...
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  • December 5, 2007

    Pratt Fellow Garrett Wood Models Cervical Spine Muscles

    This article is part of Summer Stories, a special, online issue of Dukengineer Magazine, in which students wrote about their experiences in the Summer of 2007 during their time away from Duke. by Garrett Wood, BME/ME'08 Every year, millions of serious injuries in the U.S. are caused by automobile crashes. Of those incidents that lead to long-term disabilities or death, head and neck injuries stand as a major culprit. Therefore, it is important for automobile ...
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  • November 20, 2007

    Pratt Senior Wins Marshall Scholarship for Graduate Study Abroad

    A Duke University Pratt School of Engineering senior has been chosen for a prestigious scholarship for postgraduate study abroad. Lee Pearson, of Spokane, Wash., was one of 40 students selected for the Marshall Scholarship, which provides two years of graduate-level study in the United Kingdom. Pearson, a double major in civil and environmental engineering and biomedical engineering, has been actively involved in projects in Uganda and Peru through Duke Engineers Without Borders. He is also a ...
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  • October 1, 2007

    Pratt Pair Wins YouTube Contest

    Watch Laura Moore and Lisa Richard's video "Shedding Light on Breast Cancer," which highlights their research done as Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellows. Two seniors in the Pratt School of Engineering have won the Duke University prize in a national YouTube video competition. Laura Moore (BME '08) and Lisa Richards (BME '08) produced a three-minute film about a research project that is using specially filtered light to improve breast cancer detection and measurement. Both students have been working ...
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  • October 1, 2007

    Pratt Pair Wins YouTube Contest

    Watch Laura Moore and Lisa Richard's video "Shedding Light on Breast Cancer," which highlights their research done as Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellows. Two seniors in the Pratt School of Engineering have won the Duke University prize in a national YouTube video competition. Laura Moore (BME '08) and Lisa Richards (BME '08) produced a three-minute film about a research project that is using specially filtered light to improve breast cancer detection and measurement. Both students have been working ...
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  • February 1, 2007

    Pratt Fellow Wilusz Advances on a Solution to a Common Knee Injury

    Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellow Rebecca Wilusz has made a discovery that could lead to changes in the way that physicians treat a common form of knee injury. Her studies in the lab of Professor Farshid Guilak suggest that anti-inflammatory medications might help to encourage tears of the knee cartilage, or meniscus, to heal. "Meniscus tears are fairly common something like 15 percent of all knee injuries and 75 percent of knee injuries in athletes under the ...
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  • February 1, 2007

    Schoenleber, Pratt Fellow, Maps the Growing Human Skull

    As children grow, their skulls grow with them. But physicians have lacked a good description of that developmental process, and a reliable way of recognizing early when something goes awry. Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellow John Schoenleber, a biomedical engineering major from Columbia, Mo., is working with Assistant Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering Srinivasan Mukundan Jr. on a project designed to fill that knowledge gap. His goal is to create a series of quantitative models of ...
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  • February 1, 2007

    Axelrod Explores Isolator Device that Protects against Earthquake Damage

    Civil and environmental engineering major Nicole Axelrod's research as a Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellow could lead to improvements in the design of devices meant to limit damage to sensitive equipment during an earthquake. In the laboratory of CEE Professor Henri Gavin, Axelrod works on simulated versions of the ISO-Base™ Seismic Isolation Platform, a commercially available product made by the southern California-based company WorkSafe Technologies. The platform consists of a steel ball sandwiched between two load-bearing plates ...
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  • February 1, 2007

    Pratt Fellow Bresslour Builds Microwave-Based Breast Imaging Device

    Pratt Undergraduate Research Fellow Elan Bresslour isn't satisfied with traditional X-ray mammography, the primary imaging method for breast cancer screening. In the lab of electrical and computer engineering professor Qing Liu, she is applying her engineering skill toward the development of a device with the potential to offer a valuable alternative: an imager based on less harmful, and perhaps more sensitive, microwave radiation. "Now, mammograms are the number one test for breast cancer," said Bresslour, an ...
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  • June 23, 2006

    Fulbright Sends Mugler to Study Brain-Machine Interface in Germany

    Emily Mugler, who graduated last month from Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, has won a 2006 Fulbright Scholarship to study neuroscience in southwestern Germany. The award will take her to the Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen for up to 12 months of research and study. Mugler , a former Pratt Research Fellow, will explore the brain-machine interface in the lab of Niels Birbaumer. She will focus on the ...
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  • June 23, 2006

    Fulbright Sends Mugler to Study Brain-Machine Interface in Germany

    Emily Mugler, who graduated last month from Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, has won a 2006 Fulbright Scholarship to study neuroscience in southwestern Germany. The award will take her to the Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen for up to 12 months of research and study. Mugler , a former Pratt Research Fellow, will explore the brain-machine interface in the lab of Niels Birbaumer. She will focus on the ...
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  • March 14, 2006

    With Creativity, Vincent Mao Advances on Ever Smaller, Faster Computers

    At his high school in Greenville, S.C., Vincent Mao spent his days performing piano concertos. He never expected, just five years after coming to Duke as an undergraduate, to be making strides toward the future of computing. But, now a first-year graduate student in Electrical & Computer Engineering, he says it is in research that he found the balance he had sought all along between his academic and artistic sides. "I had always shifted between academic ...
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  • March 14, 2006

    Mian Finds Meaning through Research, Outreach

    For senior Pratt fellow Matt Mian, engineering represents a way to apply his broad interest in science in "a more meaningful sense a way to get involved." During his time at Duke, the Charlotte-area native has found many methods for doing just that, from research aimed at unraveling the mechanisms behind irregular heart rhythms that can portend sudden cardiac death to work geared toward changing the attitudes of underprivileged kids about science and ...
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  • March 14, 2006

    Clifford Hou Makes Sense out of Whale Flipper's Bumps

    Clifford Hou first learned about the Pratt Fellows program when he visited Duke as a prospective student during Blue Devil Days. He remembers thinking then that the program which provides students an opportunity to do intensive research in their engineering major, including course credit and paid summer research -- was "something to strive for." Now in his senior year, the mechanical and biomedical engineering double major and Pratt Fellow from St. Louis has conducted ...
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  • March 14, 2006

    Rack-Gomer on Way to Improving Breast Cancer Detection

    Pratt Fellow Anna Rack-Gomer finds it difficult to piece together the events that first led her from her hometown of Phoenix to Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. But, now a senior double major in electrical and computer (ECE) and biomedical engineering (BME) with nearly three years of cancer-related research under her belt, Rack-Gomer could hardly be clearer about her future as an engineer dedicated to the fight against breast cancer. "The research projects that I have ...
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  • May 1, 2005

    Diekman Receives Fulbright to Study in Ireland

    Pratt senior Brian Diekman has been selected to receive a 2005 Fulbright Scholarship from the Irish Fulbright Commission. The award will provide Diekman support for up to 12 months of research and coursework at the National University of Ireland in Galway. Diekman, from West Lafayette, Ind., is majoring in biomedical engineering with a minor in religion, and will graduate in May. He is the second Pratt student to receive a Fulbright this spring. It was announced last ...
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  • May 1, 2005

    Diekman Receives Fulbright to Study in Ireland

    Pratt senior Brian Diekman has been selected to receive a 2005 Fulbright Scholarship from the Irish Fulbright Commission. The award will provide Diekman support for up to 12 months of research and coursework at the National University of Ireland in Galway. Diekman, from West Lafayette, Ind., is majoring in biomedical engineering with a minor in religion, and will graduate in May. He is the second Pratt student to receive a Fulbright this spring. It was announced last ...
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  • April 15, 2005

    Environmental Engineer Einmo Takes Global Perspective

    By Gabriel Chen, written in 2005 Exotic landscapes are not always distant and unapproachable. In 2002, just before the beginning of his sophomore year, Chris Einmo spent a summer in Montenegro, the heart of the Mediterranean, divided from Italy by the Adriatic Sea. Part of the former Yugoslavia, this republic is only an hour flight from Rome or Budapest, and one hour and a half from Zurich. Einmo, a senior majoring in civil and environmental engineering, ...
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  • April 15, 2005

    Bakhtian an Astronaut in the Making

    By Gabriel Chen, April 2005 Most kids discard dreams of becoming an astronaut as fast as they abandon childhood toys, but for senior Noël Bakhtian a mechanical engineering and physics double major at Duke the dream never let go. Some four years ago, Bakhtian, then a senior in high school, was on a flight back from a visit to MIT when she fell into conversation with a fellow colleague of Bakhtian's dad who happened to be ...
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  • April 1, 2005

    Bakhtian Receives Churchill Scholarship

    Noël Bakhtian DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke student Noël Bakhtian has been selected as a 2005 recipient of the Winston Churchill Scholarship to conduct graduate study for a year at Cambridge University in England. Bakhtian, a senior from Fort Myers, Fla., is completing a double major in mechanical engineering and physics and will graduate in May 2005. The Churchill Scholarship Program, established in 1959, enables outstanding American students to conduct graduate studies in engineering, mathematics, and the natural ...
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  • April 1, 2005

    Bakhtian Receives Churchill Scholarship

    Noël Bakhtian DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke student Noël Bakhtian has been selected as a 2005 recipient of the Winston Churchill Scholarship to conduct graduate study for a year at Cambridge University in England. Bakhtian, a senior from Fort Myers, Fla., is completing a double major in mechanical engineering and physics and will graduate in May 2005. The Churchill Scholarship Program, established in 1959, enables outstanding American students to conduct graduate studies in engineering, mathematics, and the natural ...
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  • March 15, 2005

    Research in Australia for ECE student Crosby

    By Gabriel Chen,'05 The buildings that line the street are six stories high with exteriors covered in balconies full of spectators and news crews. On the other side of wooden barricades is an ocean of even more spectators and swarms of medics carrying plastic stretchers and neck braces. On the streets, people scream and run for their lives and some push themselves against the wall as far away from the center as possible. They are chased ...
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  • December 15, 2004

    Chance to Help People Inspires Emily McDowell

    Gabriel Chen, Dec. 2004Observation one: Soft, bright flaxen hair; kindly, thoughtful blue eyes and an earnest, penetrating smile reaching like sunshine into the heart of anyone on whom it shines. Observation two: Cheerful-looking flowered chintz dress and dark rimmed glasses. Combine the two and voila! The prototype for your kindergarten school teacher? "Perhaps not," said Emily McDowell, a biomedical engineering (BME) senior, who strikes you as an effusively warm person and who describes herself ...
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  • March 15, 2004

    Robotics Junkie Brian Schaaf Loves Hands-On Work

    Written in 2004 Brian Schaaf found his calling during his three semesters in the Pratt Engineering Undergraduate Research Fellows program when he built a mobile robotic research platform and developed the basic operating software. His goal was to create a mobile and completely autonomous robot. In an autonomous robot, once the instructions are programmed, the robot takes off and keeps going until it reaches the target and finishes its 'mission.' Hopefully. If the programming and sensors aren't ...
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  • May 1, 2003

    Pratt Fellow examines genetic manipulation

    Imagine conducting innovative and potentially life saving biomedical research all before your 22nd birthday. Jamie Bergen will tell you that such dreams are possible through the Pratt Fellows program. Bergen is one of two dozen undergraduates selected annually to receive the school's distinguished Pratt Fellowship, which allows students to receive course credit and a summer stipend to conduct research under the direct supervision of faculty members. Fellows are selected their junior year based upon research interests, academic record, intellectual ability and maturity. Bergen's ...
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  • May 1, 2003

    Pratt Fellow examines genetic manipulation

    Imagine conducting innovative and potentially life saving biomedical research all before your 22nd birthday. Jamie Bergen will tell you that such dreams are possible through the Pratt Fellows program. Bergen is one of two dozen undergraduates selected annually to receive the school's distinguished Pratt Fellowship, which allows students to receive course credit and a summer stipend to conduct research under the direct supervision of faculty members. Fellows are selected their junior year based upon research interests, academic record, intellectual ability and maturity. Bergen's ...
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  • February 1, 2003

    Does a BME Degree Really Prepare You for Medical School?

    After surviving a six-week med school boot camp, Pratt biomedical engineering student Kemi Oni says she's more than ready for medical school. Oni and 107 other minority students from around the U.S. gathered in New York City this past summer for the Minority Medical Education Program, sponsored by Columbia University. The MMEP is an intensive six-week course designed to emulate the first year medical experience. In addition to lectures, students get to observe doctors practicing medicine ...
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  • February 1, 2003

    Does a BME Degree Really Prepare You for Medical School?

    After surviving a six-week med school boot camp, Pratt biomedical engineering student Kemi Oni says she's more than ready for medical school. Oni and 107 other minority students from around the U.S. gathered in New York City this past summer for the Minority Medical Education Program, sponsored by Columbia University. The MMEP is an intensive six-week course designed to emulate the first year medical experience. In addition to lectures, students get to observe doctors practicing medicine ...
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  • February 1, 2003

    Aruna Venkatesan: Making the Most Out of Engineering

    While many students at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering say designing theoretical research projects highlights their undergraduate experience, biomedical junior Aruna Venkatesan says she is most excited by learning more about how engineering can improve the quality of life of others. This appreciation for engineers' applicability probably stems from her own experience with the uses of biomedical engineering. In middle school, Venkatesan, who is from Pleasanton, Calif., was diagnosed with scoliosis -- an irregular curvature of the spine. She ...
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  • February 1, 2003

    Aruna Venkatesan: Making the Most Out of Engineering

    While many students at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering say designing theoretical research projects highlights their undergraduate experience, biomedical junior Aruna Venkatesan says she is most excited by learning more about how engineering can improve the quality of life of others. This appreciation for engineers' applicability probably stems from her own experience with the uses of biomedical engineering. In middle school, Venkatesan, who is from Pleasanton, Calif., was diagnosed with scoliosis -- an irregular curvature of the spine. She ...
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    Questions about this page? Contact:

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