The Duke UCEM Annual Research Summit features short research presentations by Sloan Scholars—Ph.D. students in the physical sciences and engineering. The event also features a keynote address from a prominent researcher in the sciences or engineering. All members of the Duke community are welcome to attend.
2025 Research Summit
The 2025 Annual Research Summit will be held on Thursday, February 27th in Bonk Auditorium, French Family Science Center, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
Keynote Speaker
Marisabel Guevara Hechtman, Ph.D.’14 (Computer Science)
Marisabel Guevara Hechtman, Ph.D. is a Staff Software Engineer in Google’s Accelerator Architecture team. She works on video processing systems such as the Video Coding Unit, which is a custom video transcoding accelerator for YouTube. The project was recognized with a Technical Emmy Award in 2024. Marisabel joined Google in 2016 as a Site Reliability Engineer for Gmail and Calendar. Marisabel received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Duke University in 2014, and she was recognized with the Dean’s Award for Mentoring in 2013. Outside of work, she enjoys yoga and traveling.
Previous Research Summits
2024
Keynote Speaker
Corey Oses
Corey Oses, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Johns Hopkins University, leads the Entropy for Energy laboratory focusing on the discovery of materials for clean and renewable energy. Specifically, Oses looks to leverage the stabilizing effects of disorder to innovate clean hydrogen production, waste-heat conversion, and electric grid technologies. He completed his bachelor’s degree in applied and engineering physics from Cornell University in 2013 and his Ph.D. in materials science from Duke University in 2018. More information can be found at entropy4energy.ai.
2023
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.
2022
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2022 Research Summit was held virtually. View the recording of the event below, featuring keynote speaker Howard Conyers, Ph.D., who earned his degree in Mechanical Engineering at Duke in 2009.
