Computing & info tech

Exploring the Impact of Collaborative, Interdisciplinary Research Through Bass Connections

In 2013, the first Bass Connections research teams embarked on ambitious projects to tackle real-world challenges ranging from gender inequality in STEM education to children’s mental health to climate policy in the U.S. to rural poverty. Since then, the program has supported nearly 500 interdisciplinary teams and brought together more than 4,000 faculty, students and staff to conduct cutting-edge research spanning dozens of disciplinary fields and world regions.

Alumnae aims for a formula for peace

Writer: 

The algorithm had been designed to predict famine.

If famines were spotted before they started, more aid could be routed to the affected country, more people could be saved. Or so the thinking went.

Rap Godz image

"Games and Culture" course offers sociocultural understanding of play

Writer: 

In the spring of 2020, JaBria Bishop built her first video game.

It was a 2D side-scroller—think Super Mario Brothers—which she believes she called Lunar Dreamscape. In it, a little girl wakes up in a lost world. Bishop’s idea for this whimsical game was for the players, too, to feel lost, so she designed it accordingly.

“I wanted the player to also feel how the little girl feels,” she says.

Toward An Autonomous Lifestyle

Writer: 

“All right, take your hands off the wheel and pull your feet off the pedals,” the Mercedes-Benz salesperson said. His tone was confident, and his posture relaxed. I was excited to see this “self-driving” car in action. The Range Rover was good, the Tesla was better, but this Mercedes had “250 times more code than the primary flight software in NASA’s space shuttle.” How could it not be the best?

Moon Landing

To the moon and beyond

Writer: 

Tonight, take a moment to gaze toward the heavens and salute the moon. After all, it was fifty years ago this month that Apollo 11 launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center and Neil Armstrong took his “small step.”

And, on the team it took to pull off such a historic feat were three Duke alumnae. Parrish Nelson Hirasaki ’67, Julie Isherwood ’68, and Lindsay Robinson ’67 all worked on the Apollo program. And by their telling, they had the time of their lives doing it.

PrecisionFDA BioCompute Object (BCO) App-a-thon

PrecisionFDA is partnering with George Washington University and FDA/CBER HIVE to launch a BioCompute Object (BCO) App-a-thon (https://precision.fda.gov/challenges/7). Participants will be given the opportunity to enhance standards around reproducibility and documentation of biomedical high-throughput sequencing by innovating and standardizing BCO creation and conformance. Beginner and advanced tracks will be available for all participant levels.

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