Engineering Magazine Articles




November 25, 2021

People often warn, “Don’t start a company with your friends.” But Kevin Gehsmann B.S.E. ’19, Clark Bulleit B.S.E. ’19, now a first-year medical student at Duke, and Tim Skapek B.S.E. ’20, all former Duke football players and Pratt School of Engineering alumni, didn’t listen to that advice.

November 25, 2021

Writer:

Scott Huler

As the summer of 2021 lengthened and autumn began to approach, the website for “Mathemalchemy”—the unique, hallucinatory, room-sized mathematical mixed-media sculpture under construction by mathematicians from all over the world—showed a countdown to its unveiling. On August 15, 2021, at noon, in Gross Hall on West Campus, students, supporters, and the dozens of mathematicians who created parts of it would join together to unveil it.

June 30, 2021

Writer:

Scott Huler

Slow-growing microbes in peat bogs in the lazy South break down organic matter much more slowly than their northern relatives, making them much better carbon sinks and more effective in preventing the release of greenhouse gases than their counterparts further north.

June 28, 2021

Writer:

Scott Huler

Want to feel like you’re at the best kids’ birthday party in the world, with a kiddie pool, the latest in mood-ring technology, and remote-control dragonflies that sometimes go crazy and start spinning around? Or would you rather do cutting-edge scientific research, combining hydrogels, balloon actuators, and independent robotic environmental response to temperature, pH, and pollution?

July 22, 2020

Writer:

Scott Huler

Duke has one surprising place to look for its quick response to the COVID-19 pandemic: the Ebola outbreak of 2014-15.

August 7, 2019

Writer:

Jake Chasan

“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

July 16, 2019

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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.

November 12, 2013

The popular perception of plastic is that it’s not the most resilient material we have at our disposal when it comes to wear and tear.

Graduate student Nathan Landy with the cloaking device.

September 17, 2013

As origin stories go, the one behind Duke electrical engineering graduate student Nathan Landy’s involvement in a White House-sponsored panel is pretty mundane. No planets exploding. No radioactive insect bites. Just an e-mail request sent from a White House staffer in June.

Image of an arrow

July 25, 2013

Growing up in New York in the 1970s, Michael Marsicano ’78, M.Ed. ’78, Ph.D. ’82 loved the English horn and the oboe. But with his sights set on medical school, he couldn’t see himself going to a conservatory. Instead, he chose Duke—a place known for training doctors that also had an outstanding wind symphony. Under the leadership of longtime music professor Paul Bryan, Michael went to Vienna with the Wind Symphony for a semester-long study-abroad program and concert tour.

January 31, 2012

Ketchup-packet-like pouch may deliver lifesaving drugs to newborns.