PRATT Outreach News

May 11, 2009

North Carolina High Schoolers Earn Pratt Scholarship

Five high school juniors (three from Charlotte, one each from Lexington and Winston-Salem) were rewarded for their achievements in pre-engineering by receiving scholarship funding from Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. Each will receive $1,000 in tuition funding to attend any college of his/her choosing. The award was established this year by David Erdman, Duke engineering graduate (1971) and Charlotte attorney. This year's winners are:: Kayla DeWald of North Davidson High School, Lexington Gustavo Gomez of North Mecklenburg High ...

December 12, 2008

Engineering World Health to Expand

In 2005, Aditi Misra spent a summer in an El Salvador hospital striving to keep ancient hospital equipment, such as ventilators and ECG machines, in good working order. If she and the other students in the Engineering World Health (EWH) summer program had stayed home that summer, many patients would have suffered. For Misra, who graduated from Duke's Pratt School of Engineering with an MS in engineering management that year, the experiences she had helping doctors ...

October 14, 2008

Engineering Change � Uganda

A knee injury kept Will Patrick from going to Uganda the summer of 2007. After all the work he put into preparing for it, nothing could have held him back this summer. That ill-fated summer he was supposed to join a small team of students from Smart Home and the Duke chapter of Engineers Without Borders in a trip to Uganda to help a community-based non-governmental organization in Nkokonjeru and assess the some of most pressing ...

December 5, 2007

A Summer of Adventure on Two Continents

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 Varun Gokarn BME/ECON '09 This summer, I was blessed with the opportunity to travel and work in South Africa for two months through the Robertson Scholars Program. Along with nine other students, I flew to Johannesburg where we visited the Soweto township, former ...

December 5, 2007

Researching Health and Human Rights in Accra, Ghana

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 Stesha Doku, BME '08 Florence Okra did not have an office. Instead, her office was her home--an apartment in the police barracks of Accra, Ghana. When I met her, I was surprised to discover that she had never had a place to separate her ...

December 5, 2007

Catching Rain in Uganda

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 Patrick Ye, BME '10 This past summer, I was one of six students on a Duke Engineers Without Borders team that traveled to Uganda. Our goal was to build a rainwater harvesting system to supply a community with a clean and reliable source of ...

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 ...

December 5, 2007

DukEngage Internship in New Orleans

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 Kristen Bova, BME '08 After spending most of my second semester junior year going to information sessions, submitting resumes through e-recruiting, and going to first round interviews, it was the beginning of April, and I was still not sure what I was doing over ...

November 1, 2007

Raising Awareness about Contaminated Water in Ghana

Professor Fred Boadu and undergraduate Natalia Rossiter-Thornton with villagers in Ghana. Two years ago, Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Fred Boadu made an unexpected discovery while mapping the geology in his home country of Ghana. The fractured bedrock beneath villages there allow nitrates from fertilizers to seep down into the groundwater, which is then pumped through boreholes for domestic use. Local farmers depend on the fertilizers to boost their yields of pineapples, which provide the locals' ...

November 1, 2007

First NCCU-Duke STEM Partnership Awards Granted

Three master's students from North Carolina Central University (NCCU), along with their NCCU advisers and Duke mentors, have been selected as the first recipients of $25,000 awards granted by the Duke-NCCU STEM Partnership. The program aims to help increase the number of underrepresented minority students who pursue one of the "STEM disciplines" of science, technology, engineering or math. Each award will provide the students with a $15,000 stipend, $5,000 for tuition and $5,000 for the supplies ...

September 19, 2007

A Summer of Engagement

Student members of the Duke Engineers Without Borders (EWB) chapter took part in three projects over the past summer all designed to improve the quality of life for people living in Uganda and Peru. Meanwhile, Engineering World Health (EWH), an organization founded by the Pratt School of Engineering's Robert Malkin, took more than 40 students to Tanzania and Central America to install or repair medical equipment in local clinics and hospitals. "It gives me great pride ...

September 19, 2007

A Summer of Engagement

August 23, 2007

NSF Supports New Engineering After-School Program

A new program called TechXcite, led by Professor Gary Ybarra of the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering, will create an engineering after-school curriculum for 4-H supported middle schools across the nation. Middle school participants in the program will also receive virtual mentoring from engineers in the electronics industry. The new partnership between the Pratt School, National 4-H Afterschool, North Carolina 4-H and the National Science & Technology Education Partnership has been made possible with more ...

May 1, 2007

Sixth-Graders Get a 'BOOST' in N.C. Science Fair Competition

BME graduate student Dawn Pedrotty works with Maya Brown in the lab. Two local sixth-grade girls--both advised by a graduate student "coach" from the Pratt School of Engineering--advanced through local and regional science fair competitions to compete at the state level this year. "The girls are exceptionally bright and very motivated and their hard work was recognized, which was exciting," said Dawn Pedrotty, the biomedical engineering graduate student who coached both state competitors. The girls were two of ...

May 1, 2007

Sixth-Graders Get a 'BOOST' in N.C. Science Fair Competition

March 20, 2007

'Graduate Student of the Year' Audrey Ellerbee Leads by Example

Audrey Ellerbee, of Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering, has been selected by The National Society of Black Engineers as its "Graduate Student of the Year." Ellerbee will receive her 2007 Golden Torch Award at the society's 33rd national convention held in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday, March 31. Ellerbee also will be discussing her path and future as a participant in the web-based Engineers Week Global Marathon on Thursday, March 22. The 24-hour Global Marathon, For, ...

March 20, 2007

'Graduate Student of the Year' Audrey Ellerbee Leads by Example

November 19, 2006

Pratt Professors' High School Mentees to Compete in National Science Competition

A pair of high school students from the N.C. School of Science and Math received regional honors in the nation's top high school science competition Nov. 17. Sagar Indurkhya of Charlotte and Nicholas Tang of Cary earned top honors at the regional finals of the 2006-07 Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology in Atlanta. The team was mentored by biomedical engineering professors Lingchong You and Jingdong Tian from Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. The students ...

September 1, 2006

Engineering Students to Customize Playground for All

The new handicap-accessible playground at Morreene Road Park will allow kids of all abilities to play together. Children of all abilities will soon have a place to play together in Durham. With the help of volunteers, including several Duke students, the Durham Parks and Recreation Department began construction in mid-August of a fully handicap-accessible playground at Morreene Road Park. Slated to open on Oct. 1, the playground will be further customized in the coming months with ...

September 1, 2006

Engineering Students to Customize Playground for All

September 1, 2006

Project Lead the Way Fosters Rise in N.C. High School Engineering

Amanda Stone, a PLTW teacher at Olympic High School in Charlotte, N.C., creates isometric drawings of her design project using Autodesk Inventor software in Duke's PLTW course Intro to Engineering Design. High school teachers from around the nation brushed up on their engineering skills through a 2-week "boot camp" offered through Duke's affiliation with Project Lead the Way (PLTW), a national pre-engineering program designed to help students prepare for college engineering coursework and build excitement for ...

September 1, 2006

Project Lead the Way Fosters Rise in N.C. High School Engineering

September 1, 2006

Summer Camps Offer Taste of Engineering

A group of girls poses with their self-built flashlights at Techtronics for Girls at Duke. Middle school students from the local area and across the country got hands-on experience with science and engineering through a variety of camps led by Pratt School undergraduate and graduate students this summer. The camp season kicked off in late June with Techtronics for Girls, followed by a Biosciences and Engineering Summer Camp offered through Duke Youth Programs and rounded up ...

September 1, 2006

Summer Camps Offer Taste of Engineering

August 17, 2006

Engineering Students to Customize Playground for All

Children of all abilities will soon have a place to play together in Durham. With the help of volunteers, including several Duke students, the Durham Parks and Recreation Department began construction in mid-August of a fully handicap-accessible playground at Morreene Road Park. Slated to open on Oct. 1, the playground will be further customized in the coming months with the addition of designs developed and built by members of Duke's chapter of Engineers Without Borders ...

August 2, 2006

A Summer Introduction to Science

Durham area middle school students raced wooden sailboats across a small pool outside the Fitzpatrick Center last week as part of the third annual Innoworks program, a science camp created and operated by Duke undergrads.This year's theme, exploration, gave students a hands-on look at different environments: land, sea, space and the human body. By racing the sailboats, the students learned about water transportation and weight balance by adding pennies to their craft. "It has helped me learn ...

July 18, 2006

Student-Built Reaching Assist Device for 7-Year-Old Wins RESNA Award

A custom-built reaching assist device developed and built by a team of students at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering won an award at the design competition of the Rehabilitation and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) in Atlanta. The students created the device -- called "BRAD" for Biomimetic Reaching Assist Device -- for a 7-year-old boy with TAR syndrome. The condition is characterized by skeletal abnormalities including the absence of portions of both arms. The student ...

April 1, 2006

Learning through Service in Flood-Ravaged Louisiana

Diary by Kendall Morgan Photos by Kendall Morgan and Daoxun Lin Saturday, March 11, 2006 On Saturday night March 11 while many of their friends were heading off for spring break vacations in Miami, New York or Mexico about 130 Duke students boarded three charter buses bound for St. Bernard's Parish, La. A 15 minute drive from New Orleans, the parish was one of the places hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina seven months ago. For ...

April 1, 2006

Learning through Service in Flood-Ravaged Louisiana

April 1, 2006

MEMP Students Create Labs for Saudi Arabian Women Engineering Students

The Duke MEM student team with Dean Kristina Johnson and Senior Associate Dean Tod Laursen. From left, Srikanth Chunduri, Bansi Kotecha, Rahul Raj Gogna, Anjana Bhagavan, Kristen Yoder, Johnson, Laursen. For college students, work study projects are typically a hum drum but necessary part of financing an education. But five Master of Engineering Management students working on interactive electrical engineering projects got a surprise trip of a lifetime to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from Feb. ...

April 1, 2006

MEMP Students Create Labs for Saudi Arabian Women Engineering Students

January 1, 2006

Pratt Student Leads Record-Breaking Charity Effort

The longest basketball game in history (Credit: Greg Richmond) Students from Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill met on Jan. 14 in the longest basketball game in history at UNC's Fetzer Gym. Pratt junior David Walker toiled for months behind the scenes to lead Duke to the charity event, which broke a Guinness world record and raised $60,000 for Hoop Dreams Basketball Academy. The Durham-based, non-profit organization provides unique opportunities for children ...

January 1, 2006

Pratt Student Leads Record-Breaking Charity Effort

January 1, 2006

BME Seniors Expand Design Skill, Open Doors for People with Disabilities

Another crop of biomedical engineering seniors at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering expanded their design skills while helping individuals with physical and developmental disabilities last semester. Their design projects -- the culmination of the elective capstone course BME 260: Devices for People with Disabilities -- ranged from a guitar strummer for a teenager with limited use of his right side to a tailored exercise machine for a woman with cerebral palsy. The undergraduates showed off their ...

January 1, 2006

BME Seniors Expand Design Skill, Open Doors for People with Disabilities

September 30, 2005

Duke Engineering to Host Sally Ride Science Festival on Oct. 15

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering is hosting the Sally Ride Science Festival on Saturday, Oct. 15, on Duke's East Campus. The festival is designed to encourage girls in grades 5-8 to pursue careers in science, math and engineering. The day's events will include a street fair with experiments, food and music; a chance to meet and listen to space-walking astronaut Kathryn Thornton; and workshops given by women ranging from veterinarians to aerospace ...

September 27, 2005

Duke Engineering Program Improves Hospital Conditions in Developing Countries

Durham, N.C. -- Duke engineering student Le (Lucy) He was stunned to discover that the lights in the operating room of her adopted Rosales, El Salvador, hospital flickered off and on during the day. Similarly, upon her first visit to the hospital, she saw patients in beds everywhere but few working monitors hooked up to them. Lucy He is one of five Duke University students who have returned to campus from a challenging and rewarding summer ...

September 10, 2005

Duke Students Assist Tsunami Reconstruction

Durham, N.C. -- While much of the world this week is riveted by images of natural destruction along the American Gulf Coast, several Duke students and alumni returned to the United States with memories of another recent disaster. It's been nine months since a tsunami surged over the land in Sumatra and other areas of the Indian Ocean, but as Deirdre McShane tells it, the line of demarcation that separated the area of destruction from the ...

September 7, 2005

Pratt Offers to Enroll Ten Engineering Management Graduate Students Displaced by Katrina

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering will accommodate up to 10 graduate students studying for Master of Engineering Management and related degrees who have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina and wish to continue coursework while their home institutions are closed. Eligibility and Enrollment Incoming students must be enrolled and in good academic standing at their home institution for the Fall semester (or equivalent Quarter) of 2005 and should meet Duke admission requirements. Students who ...

August 12, 2005

Taking Science to Middle School

* Watch rockets go up and monkeys fall down at the InnoWorks week at Duke (RealPlayer) * Quicktime version Durham, N.C. -- This month, more than 40 Durham middle school students spent a week on campus solving scientific problems in a program run entirely by Duke students. The theme for this year's InnoWorks program, which ended Wednesday, Aug. 10, was "Making Sense of Senses." Joseph Caldwell from Smithfield Middle School explained one principle he discovered about the sense of ...

August 5, 2005

Duke Engineering Students Tackle Tsunami Recovery Projects in Indonesia

Note to editors: High-resolution images will be available on request at the end of the trip. David Schaad and Jean Foster will have intermittent email access during the trip and can be reached at david.schaad@duke.edu and jean.foster@duke.edu. DURHAM, N.C. -- Five engineering students from Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering later this month will repair shrimp hatcheries in Indonesia damaged by the 2004 tsunami and help villagers stabilize an airstrip to prevent erosion. The team will travel ...

April 1, 2005

High School Students Thrive in Duke Environmental Engineering Laboratory

Ying Liu, Karl Linden and Jeff Hu Initiative, creative thinking and a high school chemistry project on antioxidants took two North Carolina School for Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) students out of their classroom and into a Duke University environmental engineering laboratory. With the encouragement of their NCSSM adviser Myra Halpin, Ying Liu, from Wilmington, N.C., and Haonan Jeff Hu, from Cary, N.C., developed an idea for a research project and contacted Duke environmental engineering Professor Karl Linden ...

April 1, 2005

High School Students Thrive in Duke Environmental Engineering Laboratory

April 1, 2005

Brodhead Urges Students to Play Role in Shaping Duke

By Keith Lawrence, Duke News Service President Richard Brodhead During his first year on campus, Duke President Richard H. Brodhead has been repeatedly told by students that one distinctive quality of Duke is it allows them to pursue their education interests. "You can do absolutely anything here," the students have said. In a talk to undergraduates March 22, Brodhead urged students to take full advantage of that opportunity. "Every day it's freshly in your power to think of the ...

April 1, 2005

Brodhead Urges Students to Play Role in Shaping Duke

March 1, 2005

Duke Engineers to Collaborate with Saudi Arabia's Effat College

Duke's Pratt School of Engineering and Saudi Arabia's Effat College, a privately funded women's college, will collaborate on the first undergraduate engineering curriculum for women in Saudi Arabia. Pratt Dean Kristina Johnson and Dr. Haifa Jamal Al Lail, dean of Effat College, signed a cooperative agreement Jan. 30. The effort is funded by a $100,000 grant from the U.S. State Department's Middle East Partnership Program Initiative. Pratt Dean Kristina Johnson (left) and Dr. Haifa Jamal Al Lail, ...

March 1, 2005
Duke Engineers to Collaborate with Saudi Arabia's Effat College
Duke's Pratt School of Engineering and Saudi Arabia's Effat College, a privately funded women's college, will collaborate on the first undergraduate engineering curriculum for women in Saudi Arabia. Pratt Dean Kristina Johnson and Dr. Haifa Jamal Al Lail, dean of Effat College, signed a cooperative agreement Jan. 30. The effort is funded by a $100,000 grant from the U.S. State Department's Middle East Partnership Program Initiative. Pratt Dean Kristina Johnson (left) and Dr. Haifa Jamal Al Lail, ...

February 10, 2005
Duke Engineers to Collaborate with Saudi Arabia's Effat College on Computer Engineering Curriculum
DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering and Saudi Arabia's Effat College, a privately funded women's college, will collaborate on the first undergraduate engineering curriculum for women in Saudi Arabia. Pratt Dean Kristina Johnson and Dr. Haifa Jamal Al Lail, dean of Effat College, signed a cooperative agreement Jan. 30. The effort is funded by a $100,000 grant from the U.S. State Department's Middle East Partnership Program Initiative. Pratt engineers will assist Effat in developing ...

February 1, 2005
Pratt Senior Offers Crash Course in Racecars
Chris Morecroft In the garage behind Hudson Hall on Friday afternoon, Nov. 4, Pratt senior Chris Morecroft offered a dozen students from Githens Middle School a crash course in racecars and a different perspective on college life. "I always wanted to be a racecar driver," Morecroft told the group. "At Duke, I've had the opportunity to take classroom learning and put it into practice." Morecroft, Pratt undergraduate and president of the Duke Formula SAE Racecar Team, is a ...

January 1, 2005
Pratt Hosts Sally Ride Science Festival
The Slime Table was a popular exhibit during the street fair. Duke's Society of Women Engineers offered students a chance to try several different experiments. CEE Chair Roni Avissar talks with several girls describing the environmental science instrumentation on the helicopter. The Pratt School of Engineering hosted the Sally Ride Science Festival on Saturday, Oct. 15. More than 480 middle-school girls from across the state came to enjoy an afternoon dedicated to hands-on exhibits and workshops. The Festival kicked ...

January 1, 2005
Pratt Students Demonstrate Light and Optics for Cary Elementary School
L to R: Cristina Fernandez, Scott McCain, Mohan Shankar, Andrew Portnoy, Evan Cull Five Pratt School of Engineering graduate students demonstrated light and optics for a third grade class during "Science Day" at Weatherstone Elementary School in Cary, N.C. on Jan. 26. It was part of the outreach program of the Duke Chapter of the Optical Society of America. The Duke students, all part of Professor David Brady's Computational Optical Sensor research group in the Fitzpatrick Center ...

January 1, 2005
"Never Give Up" � The Marshall Jones Story
Marshall Jones, Ph.D. In celebration of Martin Luther King week, the Pratt School of Engineering sponsored a talk by mechanical engineer Marshall Jones on Jan. 19. Jones, a Ph.D. mechanical engineer, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Coolidge Fellow at GE Global Research. Jones talked about his life's journey from his childhood growing up on a duck ranch on eastern Long Island to being a respected researcher in laser technology at GE's ...

December 1, 2004
Engineering Program Helps Latin Hospitals
Marquette student Jennifer Wozniczka (left) and Duke student Lucy He testing a defibrillator in Rosales, Nicaragua using a board designed and build by Engineering World Health students. Duke engineering student Le (Lucy) He was stunned to discover that the lights in the operating room of her adopted Rosales, El Salvador, hospital flickered off and on during the day. Similarly, upon her first visit to the hospital, she saw patients in beds everywhere but few working monitors ...

December 1, 2004
Pratt Civil Engineers Respond to Hurricane Katrina
Duke civil engineers responded to Hurricane Katrina devastation with a broad range of insights. They criticized the failure to heed computer models that warned of disaster; pondered how to rebuild the city to avoid future catastrophe; and examined the potential for ecological damage in the storm's aftermath. Pratt School of Engineering urban hydrologist Miguel Medina Jr. criticized the failure to heed the long history of engineering predictions and computer modeling that foretold what would happen in ...

April 1, 2004
National Awards Honor Student Inventors of Devices to Help People with Disablilities
What does a tricycle, an envelop stuffer and a neck brace have in common? These are technologies that won national awards for three student teams at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. The devices were created as part of a biomedical engineering course called Devices for People with Disabilities. The team of twins Shin Yeu Ong and Shin Rong Ong, and the team of Diana Hsu and Elizabeth Strautin Schwartz tied for first place in the NISH ...

March 26, 2004
Students at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering Win national Awards for Devices Helping Disabled
DURHAM, N.C. - Three student teams at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering have won national awards for devices created in a biomedical engineering course called Devices for People with Disabilities. Twins Shin Yeu Ong and Shin Rong Ong, who are from Singapore, and the team of Diana Hsu, of Raleigh, and Elizabeth Strautin Schwartz, of Mt. Olive, N.C., tied for first place in the NISH Workplace Technology Scholarship competition. NISH, formerly the National Industries for the ...

February 28, 2004
Veteran Astronaut Boosts Human Spaceflight in Pratt Appearance
Astronaut Ellen Ochoa, an engineer and veteran of four space shuttle flights, visited Duke as guest of the Pratt School of Engineering Feb. 27 and responded to critics of NASA's human spaceflight program by saying robots have their role as explorers but cannot match the intelligence and ingenuity of humans in space. "Obviously we think human spaceflight is very important," Ochoa told a large audience of students, faculty and children in the Levine Science Research Center's ...

February 19, 2004
NASA Astronaut and Engineer to Lecture on Space Exploration
DURHAM, N.C. - NASA astronaut and engineer Ellen Ochoa will deliver a lecture titled "Engineer to Space Explorer: A Shuttle Astronaut's View" on Friday, Feb. 27, at Duke University. The 4 p.m. lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Love Auditorium in the Levine Science Research Center on Duke's West Campus. Parking is available in the parking garage adjacent to the Bryan Center. Ochoa, who became an astronaut in ...

January 14, 2004
NSF supports more K-12 outreach from the Pratt School of Engineering
The National Science Foundation recently awarded $1.4 million to the Pratt School of Engineering, continuing to support Pratt's math and science and engineering outreach in neighboring elementary and middle schools. The latest grant, entitled MUSIC: Math Understanding through Science Integrated with Curriculum, is a five-year project headed by Gary Ybarra, Associate Professor of the Practice in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Martha Absher, Assistant Dean for Education and Outreach. The MUSIC Program partners Pratt ...

January 1, 2004
NSF supports more K-12 outreach from the Pratt School of Engineering
The National Science Foundation recently awarded $1.4 million to the Pratt School of Engineering for continued support to Pratt's math, science and engineering outreach in neighboring elementary and middle schools. The latest grant, entitled MUSIC: Math Understanding through Science Integrated with Curriculum, is a five-year project headed by Gary Ybarra, associate professor of the practice in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Martha Absher, assistant dean for education and outreach. The MUSIC Program partners Pratt ...

September 11, 2003
N.C. and Duke Launch Pre-college Engineering Program
Duke University Office of News & Communications DURHAM, N.C. -- In universities across the nation, half of all engineering students drop out of the program because they are not ready for the academics and can't catch up. Not surprisingly, the United States suffers from a shortage of engineers in all fields of engineering. To address this ongoing problem, Duke University and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction signed a partnership agreement Thursday to launch Project Lead ...

May 1, 2003
Duke Engineering Students Win National Design Competition
Two separate ideas developed by students in a Duke engineering design class that seeks to improve the lives of children and adults with disabilities have become winning entries in the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) national design competition. David Chong of Wheaton, Ill., and Billy Watson of Tacoma, Wash., were named winners for adapting a baseball glove with an aluminum brace and a Velcro strap to aid the catching prowess of ...

April 29, 2003
Duke Engineering Students Win National Design Competition
Two separate ideas developed by students in a Duke engineering design class that seeks to improve the lives of children and adults with disabilities have become winning entries in the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) national design competition. David Chong of Wheaton, Ill., and Billy Watson of Tacoma, Wash., were named winners for adapting a baseball glove with an aluminum brace and a Velcro strap to aid the catching prowess of ...

March 1, 2003
Durham School Children Visit Pratt
Some of the 300 Durham schoolchildren who visited Duke on Feb. 21 included the Pratt School of Engineering in their daylong sample of college life. The students, all eighth-graders from nine Durham public schools, will soon sign up for next year's classes, which could include college preparatory courses. Duke's Office of Community Affairs began Duke-Durham School Days four years ago to expose these students to a day on campus, and hopefully create a desire for education beyond high school. The students' first stop was ...

February 1, 2003
NCSSM Needs Partners for Robotics Competition
Several high school students visited Pratt Nov. 20, but not to get a campus tour. Instead, these students were looking for partners in a fast-paced robotics competition. The North Carolina School for Science & Mathematics, located in Durham, is home to some of the brightest high school students in the state. And for the third year in a row, NCSSM is tackling the FIRST robotics challenge--an intense national competition in which students have to design and ...

January 1, 2003
Pratt Students Mentor Youngsters at Sally Ride Science Camp
By Jessica Manson (Manson is a sophomore double majoring in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering) "Science camp?" That is the question most of these middle-school girls would probably hear if they told their peers how they spent their summer vacation. However, this past summer, a new science camp tore down the common stereotypes of lab scientists or engineers and replaced them with new ideas about those who pursue science and engineering. This summer, the Sally Ride Science Camp, held ...

December 1, 2002
Duke Partners With State to Prepare Pre-college Students for Engineering Careers
DURHAM, N.C. -- In universities across the nation, half of all engineering students drop out of the program because they are not ready for the coursework and can't catch up. Not surprisingly, the United States suffers from a shortage of engineers in all specialties. To address this ongoing problem, Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction signed a partnership agreement Sept. 11 to launch Project Lead the Way (PLTW) ...

October 11, 2002
One-Question Interview: Gary Ybarra
One-Question Interview: Gary Ybarra Pratt School Professor Gary Ybarra describes his ongoing projects to assist the teaching of math and science in K-12 programs Thursday, October 10, 2002 | Q: Gary, you and your colleagues are developing a reputation for innovative efforts to improve K-12 math and science education in North Carolina. What are some of the things that your team is doing? A: Just last week, three colleagues at Duke's Center for Inquiry-Based Learning (CIBL) and I ...

September 1, 2002
Pratt Dean Tells U.S. Senate Nation Needs Women, Minorities in Engineering
WASHINGTON -- The dean of Duke's Pratt School of Engineering has urged the Senate to act to improve the science and math education of America's children, particularly girls and minorities, so the nation will have the intellectual wherewithal to deal with terrorism and other complex issues. "It is clear we are engaged in a different kind of war that must be won with advanced logistics, networking, sensors and communications systems," Kristina Johnson told the Senate Subcommittee ...

February 1, 2002
Class Lets Students Engineer Devices for the Disabled
To help a five-year-old with cerebral palsy cut paper as easily as her classmates, two students at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering designed an electric scissors attached to a common computer mouse and a specialized paper stabilizer. Engineering senior Andrew Reish, of Vienna, Va., and graduate student Travis McLeod, of Winston-Salem, NC., designed their electric paper cutting assister as part of a class, BME 260 Devices for Disabled, that gives engineering students the opportunity to design special instruments that will enable their disabled ...

January 1, 2002
One-Question Interview: Gary Ybarra
Q: Gary, you and your colleagues are developing a reputation for innovative efforts to improve K-12 math and science education in North Carolina. What are some of the things that your team is doing? A: Just last week, three colleagues at Duke's Center for Inquiry-Based Learning (CIBL) and I received a five-year, $5.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation for TASC (Teachers and Scientists Collaborating). The TASC Force, as we call it, seeks to narrow achievement gaps, improve end-of-grade science and ...

January 1, 2002
Brown Calls for Use of Title IX to Increase Women Engineers
WASHINGTON -- Professor April Brown, chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Pratt School of Engineering, urged a Senate committee Oct. 3 to apply Title IX, the federal gender anti-discrimination law usually used in athletics, to encourage more women to become engineers and scientists. "The resulting pool of scientists and engineers will be larger and more diverse, which means we as a nation will be better prepared for the technological challenges our future will bring," Brown said in ...

December 1, 2001
Duke host regional NSBE conference
Over 60 students attended the annual National Society of Black Engineers regional conference this month. This year marks the first time that the Duke Chapter of NSBE hosted the event. "Some students came from as far away as South Carolina State, said Kemi Oni, biomedical engineering junior and an officer in the Duke Chapter of the NSBE. "We were really pleased with the turnout." During the weekend long conference, students representing a dozen schools from around the southeastern United States attended conferences on ...

October 22, 2001
Durham Schools, Pratt School of Engineering and General Electric Launch Math Project
DURHAM, N.C. - Duke University engineering students will team with Durham middle and elementary students this year to tend gardens, study worms, predict the weather and other projects aimed at boosting the younger scholars' math skills. The innovative program, titled Math Understanding through the Science of Life, or MUSCLE, will bring together students from Lakewood Elementary and Rogers-Herr Middle School with undergraduates from Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. "Math has traditionally been thought of - and taught ...

February 19, 1999
Duke Students Design Device to Aid Paralyzed Musician
Last fall, Duke biomedical engineering seniors Lindsay Johnson and Corey Weiner pooled their engineering and musical knowledge to design and build a custom electronic device whose big round sensor pads sound electric guitar-like notes when struck by light wooden hammers. Their hope is that Hamer will be able to play bass string guitar-like riffs with the new made-to-order instrument in the same manner he now plays an acoustic string instrument called the hammered dulcimer, which he ...

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