Rhodes Information Initiative Spring 2023 Newsletter
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 Rhodes Information Initiative
Rhodes Information Intiative
Fall 2023 Newsletter
Ceramic cat and amaryllis
Director's Memo
This summer we succeeded in hosting Data+, Code+, CS+, Climate+, and Applied Ethics+ in Gross Hall for the 10 weeks of Plus Programs. By keeping +Programs together we create a research community where students in different programs meet, eat, work, and play together over the summer.
All Plus Programs enjoyed a rich program of community activities including a tour of the Duke Lemur Center, the Nasher, a trip to a VR arcade, pizza parties, a cookout, and more. 
This Fall, Rhodes iiD has welcomed all 50 PhD students from the Math Department, as well as several Math faculty into our space in Gross Hall. Graduate students have dedicated work space in carrels and faculty have moved into several offices. We are thrilled to work more closely with the Math Department and host some of their seminars and classes in iiD. We look forward to an enriching Fall and reporting more this Spring.
James Moody, Associate Director, Lisa Liester, Associate Director, Robert Calderbank, Director







Plus Programs 2023 Wraps Up Another Summer of Research

Duke Plus Programs 2023 wrapped up on August 4th with a large poster session featuring projects from Data+, Code+, CS+, Climate+, and Applied Ethics+ summer programs. 56 projects were featured this year covering climate science, social science, coding, software development, ethical data literature review, public policy, history, and many more.

“I gained a lot of practical experience working on a research project that I’m interested in. I’ve learned that I enjoy doing this sort of work. I developed lots of python skills regarding running machine learning models, image processing, file management and desktop app development. My mental image when thinking ‘data science’ was having a lot of data in columns, running a regression on it, and visualizing that. Our project was more image-processing oriented, so it expanded my perception of what ‘data science’ can mean. Other groups also were working on things that weren’t the typical model-patterns-in-data workflow.”

Adam Kosinski, Computer Science ‘24
Innovations in Research Technology to Assess Forest Wildlife (Climate+)

Read more here.






Data+ 2024 Faculty Proposals Now Being Accepted
We are now accepting proposals for 2024 projects. We are especially interested in proposals that involve a partner from outside the academy, or a faculty member from a different discipline. We also encourage proposals that involve previously untested ideas or un-analyzed datasets, and we hope that the Data+ team can make a contribution with important proof-of-principle work that may lead to more substantial faculty work and/or connections in the future. We also welcome proposals that will lead to the undergraduates creating tools that might be used in the classroom or that might facilitate community engagement with data and data-driven questions. 
For more information, please see our Call for Proposals.

Hannah Jorgenson: Rhodes iiD Doctoral Fellow in Computational Humanities


Hannah Jorgensen completed her second year of the Rhodes iiD Doctoral Fellowship in Computational Humanities. The fellowship’s support helped Hannah to integrate computational methodologies in the first chapter of her dissertation. In addition, the computational techniques that she learned resulted in two conference presentations.
Hannah’s Fall 2022 English 290 seminar on “Fanfiction” enrolled 15 undergraduate students. Students in the course learned to scrape and analyze text and metadata from the fanfiction site Archive of Our Own. Hannah taught her students to use a variety of computational approaches, such as natural language processing, network analyses, and visualizations of data, to supplement traditional literary analysis.
In addition, Hannah worked as a 2023 graduate mentor in Data+ for the “Ethical Consumption” team, learning to mentor undergraduate students as they analyzed Early Modern texts on the colonization of Virginia.
Watch a video where Hannah and Professor Astrid Giugni discuss her work.

Learn more about our Rhodes iiD Fellowship here.
Congratulations to Lillian Pierce and Jianfeng Lu
Lillian Pierce was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Simons Fellowship in Mathematics. Jianfeng Lu was awarded the 2023 Feng Kang Prize, which recognizes contributions to scientific computing. We are proud of their work and proud to have them in iiD!

Rhodes iiD Welcomes Tadja Evans

This summer, Rhodes iiD welcomed Tadja Evans as a Staff Assistant, shared with the MIDS program – our first hire in 8 years! Tadja joined Duke from Amazon, with experience in order picking and in HR. Her initial duties focus on events, purchasing, and student contact. Welcome Tadja!

Check Out Our YouTube Channel

Did you know that Rhodes iiD has a YouTube channel featuring our Data+ projects, faculty interviews, graduate student experiences, and more? Take a look at some of our recent work or dive into our past projects!
Visit our YouTube Channel Here
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Rhodes Information Initiative
140 Science Drive Box 90984
Durham, NC 27708
919-613-7829