Sloan Scholar Celine Robinson, a Ph.D. candidate in civil and environmental engineering, enriched her dissertation and mentored undergraduates through Duke’s Code+ summer program. Learn more about her experience in the story by Duke’s Office of Interdisciplinary Studies.
Category: Sloan Scholars
Sloan Scholar David Pujol graduated from Duke in December 2022 with his Ph.D. in computer science. He is the second Duke Sloan Scholar to earn his degree.
Pujol was part of the first cohort of Sloan Scholars recruited by the Duke University Center of Exemplary Mentoring, starting his Ph.D. at Duke in fall 2018. He received a bachelor of computer science and mathematics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research at Duke focused on understanding the interactions between privacy protected data and fair algorithms. His dissertation, completed under the guidance of Associate Professor Ashwin Machanavajjhala, is titled “Fairness in Differentially Private Data Release.”
Pujol is now a scientist at Tumult Labs, a company cofounded by Machanavajjhala that works on a software platform for designing and deploying differentially private solutions.
The Duke University Center of Exemplary Mentoring will hold its annual research summit on Thursday, February 23, 3:30-5:30 p.m. in Bonk Auditorium at the French Family Science Center. Sloan Scholars—Ph.D. students in the physical sciences and engineering—will deliver short presentations about their research. The event will also feature a keynote address by Andrew D. Jones III, an assistant professor of environmental engineering and affiliate faculty in the Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science Department, the Duke Materials Initiative, and the Integrated Toxicology & Environmental Health Program at Duke.
Members of the Duke community are welcome to attend.
Register Now
Keynote Speaker
Andrew D. Jones III
Akhenaton-Andrew (Andrew) D. Jones III is an assistant professor of environmental engineering and affiliate faculty in the Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science Department, the Duke Materials Initiative, and the Integrated Toxicology & Environmental Health Program at Duke University. His research uses engineering and policy analysis to help solve global challenges related to water and health.
Jones is a 2021 recipient of the NIH R35 Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award to develop new models and tools for studying biofilms and a 2019 Sloan SEED fund award to develop new tools for point of use water quality monitoring systems. He was recognized as Young Investigator by the Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State, the premier center for biofilm research in the US. He received a B.S. in mathematics and a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT, where he was a Lemelson Presidential Fellow and an Alfred P. Sloan MPHD Scholar. He completed postdoctoral training as a Future Faculty Fellow at Northeastern University. He has directly supervised 2 high school students, over 20 undergraduates, 5 M.S. students, 5 Ph.D. students, and 2 postdoctoral trainees, including 8 from underrepresented backgrounds and 19 women. Jones and his team have presented at more than 40 conferences and seminars.
The Graduate School recently profiled siblings and Sloan Scholars Tyler and Alexis Johnson. Tyler is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in physics, while Alexis is in her second year in chemistry.
Cameron Darwin earned his Ph.D. in mathematics in September 2022, becoming the first Sloan Scholar at Duke to complete his degree.
Darwin came to Duke in fall 2019 as a member of the second cohort of Sloan Scholars recruited by the Duke University Center of Exemplary Mentoring. He received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin, where he became interested in differential geometry and physics.
His dissertation, completed under the guidance of Professors Kirsten Wickelgren and Lenhard Ng, was titled “Aspects of Quadratically Enriched Enumerative Geometry of Complete Intersections in Projective Space.”
Sloan Scholars Amanda Barreto and Kiarra Richardson, as well as Sloan Affiliate Aristotle Martin, presented posters on July 28 at the Early Start Poster Symposium organized by the Duke BioCoRE (Biosciences Collaborative for Research Engagement) Program. Dionna Gamble, a 2020 Ph.D. graduate in genetics and genomics, delivered the keynote address.
More Photos from the Symposium
Sloan Scholars Jessica Lalonde and Ethan LoCicero were among five Duke Ph.D. students named Burroughs Wellcome Fund Fellows under a pilot program to provide professional development support for students researching biological sciences, climate change, and human health. See the story on the Pratt School of Engineering website for details.
By John Zhu
When he was an undergraduate at Vanderbilt, Eric Yeats volunteered with an initiative to teach programming to K-12 students. In those sessions, students learned to write code that moved cartoon characters around a computer screen. While some of them had fun, Yeats felt something was missing from the experience—he wanted something more tangible than pixels on a screen.
Now entering his fourth year as a Ph.D. candidate at Duke, Yeats has spent the past few months creating the experience he envisioned by partnering with Durham Public Schools to offer a free robotics club for local middle schools that need more STEM-based afterschool opportunities.
“What really inspired me to do this project is I just really enjoy the process of engineering and problem-solving, and especially programming, and I just wanted to share how much I enjoy it with the kids at school,” said Yeats, a Sloan Scholar who is pursuing a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering in Professor Hai “Helen” Li’s lab.
Yeats pitched the idea to Durham Public Schools officials and received an enthusiastic response. For three months this spring, he spent three afternoons a week going to Lucas, Githens, and Lowe’s Grove Middle Schools for one- to two-hour afterschool sessions, teaching anywhere from five to 15 students how to program robots to avoid obstacles, understand voice commands, interact with each other, and even play soccer.
He also organized a Duke visit in May for the students, who toured the Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility and the Co-Lab Studio before ending their day at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
“I wanted to start a program that was focused on programming and teaching engineering fundamentals, but was also fun,” Yeats said. “The goal wasn’t necessarily to have the students learn as much as possible about engineering, but to just see how fun it can really be.”
Funding for the robots came from a GradEngage Fellowship, which is part of the Purpose Project at Duke. The fellowship helps graduate students partner with local community organizations to develop solutions for pressing social issues. Yeats also got help from a couple of his labmates, as fellow Ph.D. students Brady Taylor and Edward Hanson helped facilitate some of the afterschool sessions and the students’ Duke tour.
While the GradEngage project period has ended, Yeats said Durham Public School officials are now talking to him about expanding the afterschool club into a yearlong program, securing other sources of funding, and getting more Duke students involved.
“The feedback has been good,” he said. “The students wrote me a card and they are going to mail it to me, so I’m really excited about that. And the site leaders apparently liked it a lot. The people from the administration at Durham Public Schools said, in their words, that the program got ‘rave reviews.’ ”
Video: Robots programmed by students in Yeats’ robotics club
Sloan Scholar Eduardo Ortega and Sloan UCEM Affiliate Aristotle Martin were among the Duke Ph.D. students who received honorable mentions for the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships for 2021.
Ortega is a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering with a concentration in hardware security. His research focuses on understanding how emerging computational technology may be pivoted as a cryptographic scheme for hardware security primitives. He is a member of the fall 2021 cohort of Sloan Scholars.
Martin is a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering. He is part of the inaugural cohort of Sloan UCEM Affiliates, a new initiative launched by the Duke University Center of Exemplary Mentoring in fall 2021 to expand its support to more students. His research focuses on using supercomputers to simulate blood flow in patient-specific vascular geometries at cellular resolution.
Among the Duke UCEM’s 40 Sloan Scholars and eight Sloan UCEM Affiliates, seven have received NSF GRFs, and four others have earned honorable mentions.