A research team co-led by Alberto Bartesaghi, associate professor of Computer Science, Biochemistry, and Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been selected to join the Collaborative Research Network (CRN), an international, multidisciplinary, multi-institutional network working to address high-priority research questions about Parkinson's disease, through a $9 million grant awarded by Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP), in partnership with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s… read more about Duke’s Research Team Joins Global Network to Unravel the Complexity of Parkinson’s Disease »
ACM has named Nicki Washington the recipient of the 2025 ACM Frances E. Allen Award for Outstanding Mentoring, one of the computing field’s highest honors for mentorship and leadership. The biennial award recognizes individuals who have demonstrated exceptional mentoring while advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in computing. Named for pioneering computer scientist Frances Allen — the first woman to receive the ACM A.M. Turing Award — the award honors leaders whose mentorship has reshaped the field itself. … read more about Nicki Washington Receives ACM Frances E. Allen Award for Outstanding Mentoring »
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently announced the election of 120 members and 25 international members "in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research."Two Duke faculty join the ranks of this prestigious organization:Robert Calderbank is Charles S. Sydnor Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and professor of mathematics at Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. He is also a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Pratt School of… read more about Robert Calderbank Elected to The National Academy of Sciences »
Caitlin Tuttle is a senior double majoring in Statistical Science and Computer Science with a minor in Cultural Anthropology. In addition to serving as a Trinity Ambassador, she is a SPIRE Fellow — a program that helped her build a strong sense of community on campus by supporting students who have historically faced barriers to access, inclusion, or opportunity in STEM. Tuttle is interested in using statistical analysis to address humanitarian challenges. Through the Data+ program, she conducted research examining how… read more about Caitlin Tuttle '26: From Data+ to Humanitarian Impact »
What if coordinated AI interventions could heal the internet’s civility problem? A team led by Jun Yang, the Knut Schmidt Nielsen Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, received an honorable mention from the Laude Moonshots competition, along with a $100,000 grant to develop an AI-powered system for improving civic discourse on social media. Yang’s team brings together a multidisciplinary group of Duke faculty. Christopher Bail, Professor of Sociology, and Alexander Volfovsky,… read more about Duke Team Receives $100,000 Laude Moonshots Award to Make Social Media More Civil »
Sarah Wu is a senior from San Diego, California, double majoring in Statistical Science and Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics. At Duke, she developed a strong interest in statistics and teaching through her work as a teaching assistant for courses including Introduction to Calculus II and Introduction to Data Science. After graduation, Wu will pursue a Ph.D. in Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. As graduation approaches, we asked Wu to reflect on her time at Duke, the experiences… read more about Sarah Wu '26: Discovering a Love for Challenge and Teaching at Duke »
Josh Alms is a senior from Long Island, New York, double majoring in Statistical Science and Computer Science with a minor in German. During his time at Duke, he worked in several applied research settings and wrote about sports for The Duke Chronicle. He enjoys traveling —especially his time studying abroad in the Duke in Berlin Program — as well as reading fantasy novels and hiking. After graduation, he will work in Washington, D.C., as a consultant. As commencement approaches, we asked Alms to reflect on his time at… read more about Josh Alms '26: Rediscovering Sports and Scholarship at Duke »
Taylor Moorehead is a senior from Woodstock, Maryland, double majoring in Computer Science and Economics with a minor in Mathematics. In addition to serving as a Trinity Ambassador, she serves as an executive member of Duke Quantitative Finance, social chair of The Cube Entrepreneurship, LLC, and as a tour guide for the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. For the past two summers, she worked as a quantitative trader intern in Chicago and Austin. In her free time, she enjoys playing spikeball and attending Duke basketball… read more about Taylor Moorehead '26: A Small Decision That Defined a Duke Experience »
One of Felix Zhu’s most memorable moments at Duke happened early on. During his first year, Zhu and his band, Weekend Therapy, performed for the last day of classes celebration (LDOC), opening for Cafuné, one of his favorite artists. Standing on that stage felt like a high point, even as a first-year student. “It was a huge milestone for me and my bandmates and a huge personal achievement to be on the big stage,” he says. That moment captures something central about Zhu’s four years at Duke: a… read more about Felix Zhu '26 Found His Rhythm on Stage and in the Classroom »
Students in Duke’s Natural Language Processing course are getting hands-on experience with cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools thanks to a teaching grant from Thinking Machines Lab, an AI research company focused on making advanced AI systems more accessible to researchers and students, to Assistant Professor of Computer Science Bhuwan Dhingra. The grant is part of the company’s Tinker Research and Teaching Grants program, which provides funding and computing credits to universities using its platform to train… read more about New Grant Funds Hands-On Experience with Large Language Models at Duke »
If you care about shaping the future of medicine, climate, art, policy, business or justice, Computer Science already has a place for you. You don’t have to arrive fluent in code. What you do need is a willingness to wrestle with complex ideas and a desire to understand how intelligent systems are transforming the world. For many students, especially those coming from outside of STEM, the first CS course can feel like learning a foreign language, which is natural — and temporary. Programming is often the… read more about Computer Science is About Shaping the Future, Not Just Writing Code »
Yasa Baig, ’22, has been awarded a PD Soros Fellowship in support of a Ph.D. in bioengineering at Stanford, joining 20 other Duke recipients of the award. Born in India and raised in Massachusetts, Baig earned a B.S. in physics and computer science at Duke where he was a recipient of the Goldwater Scholarship and was an A.B. Duke Scholar. As a Marshall Scholar, Baig went on to complete a master’s degree in physics and another in mathematics at the University of Cambridge. At Stanford, Baig… read more about Trinity Alumnus Yasa Baig Wins Soros Fellowship for Graduate Study »
"What matters is finding your people, the ones who inspire you, ground you and remind you it’s okay to follow a different beat," said senior Lilian Fan. (Photo courtesy of Fan) Lilian Fan was drawn to Duke not by rankings or undergraduate research or even basketball. She came because of a frequency.Encouraged by her high school music teacher to explore colleges with student-run radio, Fan’s research kept circling back to WXDU. After an online deep dive into North Carolina, she liked what… read more about Lilian Fan '26: Traveling to the Beat of a Different Drum »
Meta’s Superintelligence Labs launched its first generative AI model, called Muse Spark, earlier this week. It is currently available through the Meta AI app, but the company plans to integrate Muse Spark across all of its platforms—including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—in the coming weeks.Handing over this kind of data to any AI tool is a risky decision, even if users are able to generate personalized advice. “Usage of these models can be really tricky,” says Monica Agrawal, an assistant professor at Duke University… read more about Duke's Monica Agrawal Cautions Against Sharing Health Data With AI »
Jian Pei, an Arthur S. Pearse Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, has been selected to receive the 2026 PAKDD Distinguished Research Contributions Award. The Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) is a prestigious and highly selective conference that includes high-profile keynote and invited talks as well as peer-reviewed full research papers. Pei will present his research, Data Mining in the Age of AI: What Endures, What Changes, and What Matters Next, in… read more about Duke Computer Science Professor Jian Pei Receives PAKDD Distinguished Research Award »
Ten63 Therapeutics, a biotechnology company with strong Duke University roots, has secured major new investment to advance its artificial intelligence-driven approach to drug discovery. The company recently announced a strategic financing round that brings its total funding to more than $45 million, with support from major investors including the Gates Foundation and the Chugai Venture Fund. Ten63 was founded by Duke professor Bruce Donald and his former Ph.D. students, Marcel Frenkel (now CEO) and Mark Hallen (now CTO… read more about Duke-Founded AI Drug Discovery Company Secures Major New Funding »
Duke University undergraduates Daniel Levin, Anushka Peer, Emily Song, and Caroline Zhang have been honored as Barry M. Goldwater Scholars. This prestigious award recognizes accomplished sophomore and junior researchers who plan to pursue careers in the fields of science, engineering, and mathematics. Each Goldwater Scholar receives up to $7,500 annually toward the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board.“Congratulations to Duke’s newest Goldwater Scholars,” Provost Alec D. Gallimore said. “Duke is tremendously… read more about Three Trinity Undergraduates Named 2026 Goldwater Scholars »
For Duke student Nicholas Nease, climate change has never been a distant or abstract concept—it’s something he has seen reshape the place he calls home. Growing up in Florida, Nease saw people raise their houses 12 feet into the air, setting them on pilings to stay ahead of rising floodwaters in coastal communities.“That’s when people start caring,” he said.A double major in environmental science and policy and computer science, Nease has been caring about climate, energy and the environment his whole life.In high school,… read more about Trinity Undergraduate Says Duke is the 'Perfect Place' to Tackle Climate and Energy Challenges »
Duke student Jasper Svenson started exploring AI agents in the fall of 2025, focusing primarily on their real-world business applications. And with a background in restaurant-focused investment banking—as well as parents who spent their careers in the restaurant industry—he kept coming back to one space: the drive-thru.“After some conversations, I fell onto the drive-thru, which is a spot that I think is going to be very automated over time,” Svenson said.With that in mind, he brought on his classmate Carlos Penzini, a math… read more about Duke Students Build Startup Bringing AI Personalization to Drive-Thrus »
The Bass Connection team, Duke iGEM: Synthetic Biology for Human Health and Society (Duke iGEM), earned a gold medal at the 2025 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Jamboree for its project RESPIRA: Responsive Engineered Strain for Polymicrobial Infection Recovery in Airways. Students from across Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and Pratt School of Engineering comprise the core of Duke iGEM. Cameron Kim, assistant professor of the practice in Biomedical Engineering explains that RESPIRA… read more about Duke iGEM Team Wins Gold at 2025 International Jamboree »
In this teaching practice byte (TPB), Dr. Brian Harrington discusses his SIGCSE Technical Symposium 2025 paper on Literature Mapping, a scaffolded, scalable, low-overhead way to introduce undergraduate students to research and bootstrap a student research group. We discuss how literature mapping helps students practice reading many papers in progressively more depth. His process assigns each paper to two different students, builds in flexibility for students who leave partway through, and culminates in a publishable… read more about CS-Ed Podcast: Literature Mapping with Undergraduates »
Digital communications pioneer recognized for foundational contributions to technologies enabling billions of devices from early modems to modern smartphones. read more about Duke’s Robert Calderbank Receives Marconi Prize »
Cynthia Rudin has been named a Fellow of the world's preeminent computing society — the Association for Computing Machinery — for her contributions to and leadership in interpretable machine learning and societal applications.The Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Lehrman Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Rudin “represent the top one percent of professionals in our association,” explained ACM President Yannis Ioannidis. Rudin’s research focuses on interpretable machine learning and its applications — … read more about Association for Computing Machinery Selects Cynthia Rudin for Outstanding Achievement »
We are pleased to announce that six of our undergraduate majors and minors have been recognized by the Computing Research Association (CRA) for Outstanding Undergraduate Research in 2025-2026.This prestigious program honors undergraduate students at North American colleges and universities who demonstrate outstanding potential in computing research.Please join the Computer Science Department in congratulating the following students:Ian Zhang, Computer Science… read more about 2025-2026 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards Announced »
The results are in from those medical tests you took last week, and they might as well be written in Sanskrit. You could phone your doctor’s office for an explanation, but they won’t have an opening until baseball season.For millions of us, the next step is logging on to an AI chatbot. It’s not an entirely bad idea. Services including ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Gemini are great at summarizing complex documents and translating arcane medical jargon into plain English. read more about Monica Agrawal Discusses Public Health Concerns as Millions Are Turning to AI for Medical Information »
Pardis Emami-Naeini is the winner of the Foresight Institute’s 2025 Norm Hardy Prize. Emami-Naeini, director of Duke’s InSPIre Lab and an assistant professor of Computer Science, was recognized for developing a layered cybersecurity label for smart home devices.Consumers increasingly purchase smart home technologies without a clear understanding of how their data is managed or protected. Emami-Naeini’s research shows that when security and privacy information is presented clearly and accessibly, people are more… read more about Pardis Emami-Naeini Announced as 2025 Norm Hardy Prize Winner for Advances in Usable Security »
Most people treats consensus protocols as boring and impenetrable. That’s a mistake. Under the hood, there’s an intense race to design faster, higher-throughput, and adversary-resilient consensus protocols. That work directly determines retail UX and explains why Ethereum, Solana, and other L1s obsess over consensus. For Episode 1 of The Coordinate, I sat down with Kartik Nayak, one of the world’s leading consensus researchers, to pull consensus out of the black box and build a first-principles mental model: how… read more about Consensus from First Principles: Kartik Nayak Joins The Coordinate Podcast »
Duke is introducing a new Technology Policy minor this spring, expanding academic options for all Trinity students interested in the intersection of technology, politics and society. The minor, a collaboration between Trinity College of Arts & Sciences and the Sanford School of Public Policy, is designed to meet the growing demand among undergraduates for structured coursework that connects technological change to its broader public implications. Although the minor will be housed in Sanford, it is… read more about Trinity Launches New Technology Policy Minor with Sanford »
If you spend enough time on a college campus, you might hear some unfair assumptions about Computer Science students, like they’re all “tech people” who spend long days coding in dark rooms. Or, increasingly, you might hear that the field itself is losing momentum now that AI can write so much code. But in 2026, those myths collapse the moment you look at what computer science actually is — and what today’s students are doing with it.For starters, computer science isn’t just coding. Coding is to Computer… read more about Computer Science: The Major That (Still) Opens Doors in Every Direction »
Shaundra Daily was recognized for her contributions to computing education, and Nicki Washington was recognized for contributions to broadening participation in computing. read more about Nicki Washington and Shaundra Daily Named Distinguished Members of Association for Computing Machinery »