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Rhodes Information Initiative
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Director's MemoSpring is in the air, and applications to our +Programs are humming. Every year we draw students from every major at Duke, and we think that participating in a vibrant learning community makes it more likely that a first research experience is positive.
Our model of project-focused team activity draws equally many male and female applicants, and a demographically more diverse group than is typical in STEM fields. We would like to think it provides a roadmap for transforming the demographics of computing.
Beginning in 2016 with the Durham Neighborhoods project, the +Programs have worked with the City of Durham every summer on data analysis projects that have helped city officilas make better informaed policy decisions. Several of these projects span multiple summers, such as the Mental Health Interventions in Durham County projects. We were delighted to see +Programs students showcased at the launch of the Duke Center for Community Engagement at the Durham Convention Center in February.
The +Programs started with only 10 students in 2014, and ten years later we have grown to about 250 participants. We organize to make it easy for other units to launch +Programs and we invite you to follow the link to our +Programs website to learn more about every program coming this summer. Students work full time for 10 weeks, but it is not all work, as our scale makes it possible to organize a rich program of community activities. We are hugely grateful to Paul Bendich for directing the +Programs for the past 10 years and inspiring their success. This year, Paul is leaving Duke to become CEO of Geometric Data Analytics, a consulting company, and we wish him every success in his new venture. Paul and Greg Herschlag co-directed the +Programs last summer, and Greg is leading the team this coming summer. Welcome to a new year!
Colleen Robles, Associate Director
Nick Eubank, Associate Director
Robert Calderbank, Director
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iiD Professor Ingrid Daubechies Wins National Medal of Science
iiD's very own Ingrid Daubechies, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of Mathematics, received the National Medal of Science in 2025. She is honored for her pioneering work on signal processing.
“Ingrid Daubechies is a singular figure in her field, and we congratulate her on this recognition of her profound impact on science and technology,” said Duke Provost Alec D. Gallimore. “Her distinguished career has demonstrated the enormous potential of academic research and the transformative power of interdisciplinary thinking.”
Nicknamed “The Godmother of the Digital Image” by The New York Times, Daubechies’ research on wavelet theory — a complement of the Fourier technique — underlies much of today’s image processing technologies, including image compression and denoising. Anytime you go to a movie theater, each frame has been compressed using Daubechies’ wavelet-based method.
Daubechies, along with the other 13 National Medal of Science awardees, received the medal from the president Jan. 3 during a ceremony at the White House.
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iiD Congratulates Marie-Hélène Tomé and Sarah Konrad for Their Marshall Scholar Awards
Marie-Hélène Tomé is a senior Mathematics major and Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize, Goldwater Scholarship, and Duke Faculty Scholarship recipient.
Sarah Konrad is a 2024 Faculty Scholar and Nakayama Public Service Scholar, and she participated in Data+ last summer. Both students are 2025 recipients of the Marshall Scholar Award.
Marshall Scholarships are awarded each year to high-achieving American students to pursue post-graduate studies in all academic disciplines at any university in the United Kingdom. The award covers all university fees, cost-of-living expenses, and many other expenditures.
To read more about these students and the Marshall Scholarship, click here!
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Duke +Programs Kicks Off 2025 Season With Info Fair
Duke University's growing +Programs kicked off the 2025 season on January 16th in the Energy Hub of Gross Hall with an Information Fair. Representatives from Data+, Code+, CS+, Climate+, Applied Ethics+, Math+, Arts+, Doc+, and History+ were present to answer questions from students interested in these exciting summer programs. Applications for many of these programs also opened on January 16th. The +Programs at Duke are immersive, experiential learning opportunities across a wide range of disciplines, including technology, climate, creative arts, applied ethics, documentary studies, math, and history. These co-curricular programs provide students with hands-on experiences that emphasize research, creative problem-solving, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Open to students from diverse backgrounds and varying levels of experience, the +Programs foster innovation, inclusivity, and critical thinking, preparing participants for impactful careers and further academic exploration.
Stay tuned for our summer recap this Fall, along with updates about our Finale on July 25th in the Gross Hall Energy Hub. If you would like to attend, please email ariel.dawn@duke.edu for more information and a parking pass!
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Data+ Presents at Launch of Duke Community Affairs Event
Six student teams from Data+ 2022 - 2024 presented their work at the launch of the new Duke Center for Community Engagement Launch Event at the downtown Durham Convention Center on February 5th, 2025, showcasing some of the projects Data+ has done for the City of Duham and for North Carolina communities. Rhodes iiD and Data+ are excited to partner with this new Duke Center in connecting with projects within the community, and we were pleased to be a part of this event! Not only were these students willing to take time out of their busy schedules to share this work, it speaks to the passion they feel about projects that have a real impact in the lives of others. Learn more about our Data+ projects here and let us know if you have an idea!
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Mathemalchemy Comic TranslatedAbout Mathemalchemy: A Comic Book Adventure in Math and Art is available in English, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, and soon to be available, Portugese! Download your own copy of this whimsical story of the magic of math and art here. The Mathemalchemy Exhibit will be at the University of Quebec in Montreal until May 2. Over the summer Mathemalchemy will move to the Navajo Nation Exhibit in Arizona. To stay up tp date with this traveling magical display, click here!
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Congratulations to Nimmi Ramanujam!
Nimmi Ramanujam, Robert W. Carr, Jr., distinguished professor of biomedical engineering, received a $10.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to support her research aimed at detecting and treating early breast cancer.
The 2024 Innovator Award will cover four years of Ramanujam and her team’s work to reduce the burdens of cancer treatments on patients, particularly ones who do not live near a hospital.
Ramanujam shared that her team hopes to develop a new treatment model that would allow patients to receive their entire treatment in one visit rather than returning for multiple doses. To do so, she said the team will look to take advantage of currently known information about tumors in order to develop effective engineering technologies.
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