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Origami Robots: How Technology Moves at the Micro Level

On February 27, 2023

In Computers/Technology, Engineering, Medicine, Nanotech

Imagine a robot small enough to fit on a U.S. penny. Or even small enough to rest on Lincoln’s chest. It sounds preposterous enough. Now, imagine a robot small enough to rest on the chest of Lincoln – not the Lincoln whose head decorates the front side of the penny, but the even tinier version of him on the back.

Before it was changed to a Union Shield, the tail side of pennies contained the Lincoln Memorial, including a miniscule representation of the seated Lincoln statue that rests inside. Barely visible to the naked eye, this miniature Lincoln is on the order of a few hundred micrometers wide. As incredible as it sounds, this is the scale of robots being built by Professor Itai Cohen and his lab at Cornell University. On February 22, Cohen shared several of his lab’s cutting-edge technologies with an audience in Duke’s Schiciano Auditorium.

Dr. Itai Cohen from Cornell University begins his presentation by demonstrating the scale of the microrobots being developed by his lab.

To begin, Cohen describes the challenge of building robots as consisting of two distinct parts: the brain of the robot, and the brawn. The brain refers to the microchip, and the brawn refers to the “legs,” or actuating limbs of the robot. Between these two, the brain – believe it or not – is the easy part. As Cohen explains, “fifty years of Moore’s Law has solved this problem.” (In 1965, Gordon Moore theorized that roughly every two years, the number of transistors able to fit on microchips will double, suggesting that computational progress will become exponentially more efficient over time.) We now possess the ability to create ridiculously small microcircuits that fit on the footprint of a few micrometers. The brawn, on the other hand, is a major challenge.

This is where Cohen and his lab come in. Their idea was to use standard fabrication tools used by the semiconductor industry to build the chips, and then build the robot around the chip by folding the robot into the 3D shape they desired. Think origami, but at the microscopic scale.

Like any good origami artist, the researchers at the Cohen lab recognized that it all starts with the paper. Using the unique tools at the Cornell Nanoscale Facility, the Cohen team created the world’s thinnest paper, including one made out of a single sheet of graphene. To clarify, that’s a single atom thickness.

Next, it came to the folding. As Cohen describes, there’s really two main options. The first is to shrink down the origami artist to the microscopic level. He concedes that science doesn’t know how to do that quite yet. Alas, the second strategy is to have the paper fold itself. (I will admit that as an uneducated listener, option number two sounds about as absurd as the first one.) Regardless, this turns out to be the more reasonable option.

Countless different iterations of microrobots can be fabricated using the origami folding technique.

The basic process works like this: a seven nanometer thick platinum layer is coated on one side with an inert material. When put in a solution and voltage applied, ions that are dissociated in the solvent will absorb onto the platinum surface. When this happens, a stress is created that bends the device. Reversing the voltage drives away the ions and unbends the device. Applying stiff elements to certain regions restricts the bending to occur only in desired locations. Devices about the thickness of a hair diameter can be created (folded and unfolded) using this method.

This microscopic origami duck developed by the Cohen Lab graced the covered of Science Robotics in March 2021.

As incredible as this is, there is still one defect: it requires a wire to an external power source that attaches onto the device. To solve this problem, the Cohen lab uses photovoltaics (mini solar panels) that attach directly onto the device itself. When light is shined on the photovoltaic (via sunlight or lasers), it moves the limb. With this advance and some continuous tweaking, the Cohen lab was able to develop the world’s smallest walking robot.

At just 40 microns by 70 microns by 2 microns thick, the smallest walking microrobot in the world is able to fold itself up and walk off the page.

The Cohen Lab also achieved “BroBot” – a microrobot that “flexes his muscles” when light is shined on the front photovoltaics and truly “looks like he belongs on a beach somewhere.”

The “BroBot,” complete with “chest hair,” was one of the earlier versions of the robot that eventually was refined into the world record-winning microrobot.

The Cohen Lab successfully eliminated the need for any external wire, but there was still more left to be desired. These robots, including “BroBot” and the Guinness World Record-winning microrobot, still required lasers to activate the limbs. In this sense, as Cohen explains, the robots were “still just marionettes” being controlled by “strings” in the form of laser pulses.

To go beyond this, the Cohen Lab began working with a commercial foundry, X-Fab, to create microchips that would act as a brain that could coordinate the limb movements. In this way, the robots would be able to move on their own, without using lasers pointed at specific photovoltaics. Cohen describes this moment as “cutting the strings on the marionette, and bringing Pinocchio to life.”

This is the final key step in the development of Ant Bot: a microrobot that moves all on its own. It uses a hexapod gate, meaning a tripod on each side. All that has to be done is placing the robot in sunlight, and the brain does the rest of the coordination.

“Ant Bot,” one of the most advanced of all microrobots to come out of the Cohen Lab, is able to move autonomously, without the aid of lasers.

The potential for these kinds of microrobots is nearly limitless. As Cohen emphasizes, the application for robots at the microscale is “basically anything you can imagine doing at the macroscale.” Cleaning surfaces, transporting cargo, building components. Perhaps conducting microsurgeries, or exploring new worlds that appear inaccessible. One particularly promising application is a robot that mimics that movement of cilia – the microscopic cellular hair responsible for countless locomotion and sensory functions in the body. A cilia-covered chip could become the basis of new portable diagnostic devices, enabling field testing that would be much easier, cheaper, and more efficient.

The researchers at the Cohen Lab envision a possible future where microscopic robots are used in swarms to restructure blood vessels, or probe large swathes of the human brain in a new form of healthcare based on quantum materials.

Until now, few would have imagined that the ancient art of origami would predict and enable technology that could transform the future of medicine and accelerate the exploration of the universe.

Design challenge feels like fun, actually earns credits

By Kyla Hunter

On February 1, 2023

In Engineering, Students

It seemed like soccer — football — was everywhere in December. The World Cup is the most watched sporting event in the world, attracting viewership from billions of people every four years.

Yet, despite advances in training, technique, and the ability to have half of the Earth’s population watching a single game at the same time, ‘the beautiful game’ has remained remarkably similar to its original form, which is believed to go back thousands of years.

Inspired by the World Cup and the topic of innovation in sports, one team of Duke undergraduates decided that the game was due for a bit of innovation.

Team Aelevate and their device for turning any bike into a stationary exerciser.

They were students enrolled in the Fall 2022 semester of Product Design one of five student teams tasked with the challenge of creating a “novel smart fitness device.”

Dedicated to the idea of incorporating “smart fitness” into soccer, the team decided to spend the semester building a smart soccer goal post. They retrofitted a goal post with lasers and photoresistors to detect the exact speed and position at which the ball passes through the goal and report the results in a user-friendly computer interface. The motivation behind this device was to provide a tool that helps amateur and professional soccer players hone their scoring skills with precise, real-time data.

Over the course of the semester, the team brainstormed, conceptualized, designed, and built a high-fidelity, working prototype of their product, eventually culminating in an end-of-semester product trade show.

The Product Design course, created just over one year ago by Dr. Rebecca Simmons, is intended to provide another opportunity for students to take a class focused on team-based, open-ended design. The class aims to “expand students’ designing under constraint skills,” explains Simmons, a widely beloved professor of mechanical engineering for undergraduates.

A School of Engineering video about the showcase event

Students work in small groups of 4-5, usually a mix of mechanical and electrical engineers, to conceptualize, design, prototype, build, and test a product over the course of one semester. The only constraints are a budget of $1,000, and a theme that varies from semester to semester. In the past the theme has been “smart kitchen,” “smart transportation,” and, this semester, “smart fitness.”

The LaserF team and their smart soccer goal.

Undergraduate engineers partner with graduate students in Engineering Management (Managing Product Design, an advanced topics class taught by Dr. Gregory Twiss). While the undergraduate engineers focus on designing and building, the graduate students learn about the management side of developing a product (business, marketing, customer analysis, and more). While previously just open to mechanical engineering students, in Fall 2022 the class expanded to include ECE students and ECE professor Dr. Tyler Bletsch.

Creating novel smart technology is always a daunting task, but it adds a whole new layer of complexity when the device you’re creating has to be kicked, hit, or otherwise struck with heavy objects.

For LaserF, the group developing the smart soccer goal, the class certainly fulfilled the promise of providing a learning experience that was challenging and rigorous. The project encountered numerous obstacles from beginning to end, according to team members Lelia Jennings (ME ‘23) and Jake Mann (ME ‘23). Brainstorming an idea, meeting the budget constraints, coordinating with the graduate team, and working within the rules of the on-campus makerspaces were all constant challenges. One of the most comical moments, according to Lelia, occurred on the very day of the trade show.

For most of the year, the Fitzpatrick atrium looks like a quiet, ordinary, empty space. A pretty space to study and pass through on your way to class, but otherwise unremarkable. During the end of the semester, however, it transforms into one of the busiest spots on campus. The atrium becomes the site of several poster fairs and project presentations that represent the culmination of a semester’s worth of hard work for numerous classes, clubs, and independent studies. One such event is the Product Design trade show.

After months of work, LaserF finally found themselves in the buzzing atrium, ready for the show. After setting up all their complex parts, the product was ready for the first test throw in the final, real working environment. One of the grad students volunteered for the premiere kick-off.

After a tense countdown, the student kicked the ball… and launched it directly into the crossbar of the goal, knocking it back, and sending every laser out of misalignment. Luckily, as Lelia recalls, the team was all “so sleep deprived, we just started laughing.” With a few minutes to spare before the beginning of the show, they were able to recalibrate their device in time.

This is Autospot – a device for lifting weights safely by yourself.

One more notable theme arose when a new idea was tossed out in the weekly class meeting: what about weatherproofing? Admittedly, the team had not thought about it. Thinking on the fly, one team member jokingly posed solving the problem with “a well-placed piece of tape.” As the weeks went by, weatherproofing still never managed to make it up the list of priorities. Turning to the professor for advice as the tradeshow approached, the suggestion that came back was perhaps using some well-placed pieces of tape after all. “It’s funny how priorities change with time,” said Jake Mann.

In a class of 25 students, LaserF was not the only group to overcome significant challenges to produce a remarkable final product. The team Aelevate created an accessory that turns any bicycle into a stationary bike, providing variable resistance, and adjustable inclines. Revfit created a boxing device integrated with lights and sounds to create a fun boxing workout that evokes the competitive spirit of an arcade game. Gear Guroo created a device that attaches onto bicycles and recommends the optimal bike gear. Lastly, AutoSpot created an automatic spotter device for a bench press. It uses a hydraulic press to lift a barbell away from the chest when failure is detected.

Revfit and their boxing machine. That’s me, second from left

Overall, the tradeshow was a tremendous success. All of the students in the class, many of whom have already taken it twice, resoundingly recommend it to fellow engineering students.

Eva Jacobsthal, a member of the AutoSpot team, appreciates that the class “allows students to have complete ownership over the development process – you are able to demonstrate your creativity and knowledge base while gaining hands-on experience.” Another student notes that the course feels like “an extracurricular that counts for academic credit.”

Simmons said the best part of the class is the students who take it, noting “the curiosity, dedication, perseverance and excitement of the students is really reflected in the innovative and high-quality final designs.” The class, next offered in Fall 2023, comes highly recommended to any graduate or undergraduate engineering students who may be interested in product design.

Lastly, the class serves as a reminder to always take the long way through the Fitzpatrick atrium when the end of the semester rolls around – you never know what exciting trade show or product fair you might step into.

Post by Kyla Hunter, Class of 2023

For Weary Scholars, a Moment to Regroup, Reconnect…and Write

By Robin Smith

On January 2, 2023

In Anthropology, Behavior/Psychology, Data, Engineering, Faculty, History, Humanities, Neuroscience

DURHAM, N.C. — English professor Charlotte Sussman doesn’t get much time in her role as department chair to work on her latest book project, an edited collection of essays on migration in and out of Europe.

“At least not during daylight hours,” Sussman said.

But a recent workshop brought a welcome change to that. Sussman was one of 22 faculty who gathered Dec. 13 for an end-of-semester writing retreat hosted by the Duke Faculty Write Program.

*Duke faculty and staff gather for an end-of-semester writing retreat.*

Most of them know all too well the burnout faculty and students face at the end of the semester. But for a few precious hours, they hit pause on the constant onslaught of emails, meetings, grading and other duties to work alongside fellow writers.

The participants sat elbow-to-elbow around small tables in a sunlit room at the Duke Integrative Medicine Center. Some scribbled on pads of paper; others peered over their laptops.

Each person used the time to focus on a specific writing project. Sussman aimed to tackle an introduction for her 34-essay collection. Others spent the day working on a grant application, a book chapter, a course proposal, a conference presentation.

“We have so many negative associations with writing because there’s always something more to do,” said associate professor of the practice Jennifer Ahern-Dodson, who directs the program. “I want to change the way people experience writing.”

Ahern-Dodson encouraged the group to break their projects into small, specific tasks as they worked toward their goals. It might be reading a journal article, drafting an outline, organizing some notes, even just creating or finding a file.

After a brief workshop, she kicked off a 60-minute writing session. “Now we write!” she said.

The retreat is the latest installment in a series that Ahern-Dodson has been leading for over 10 years. In a typical week, most of these scholars wouldn’t find themselves in the same room. There were faculty and administrators from fields as diverse as history, African and African American Studies, law, psychology, classics, biostatistics. New hires sitting alongside senior scholars with decades at Duke.

*Peggy Nicholson, J.D., Clinical Professor of Law*, *writing alongside colleagues from across campus*

“I really like the diversity of the group,” said Carolyn Lee, Professor of the Practice of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. “It’s a supportive environment without any judgement. They all have the same goal: they want to get some writing done.”

Sussman said such Faculty Write program get-togethers have been “indispensable” to bringing some of her writing projects over the finish line.

Participants say the program not only fosters productivity, but also a sense of connection and belonging. Take Cecilia Márquez, assistant professor in the Duke History Department. She joined the Duke faculty in 2019, but within months the world went into COVID-19 lockdown.

“This was my way to meet colleagues,” said Márquez, who has since started a writing group for Latinx scholars as an offshoot.

The writing retreats are free for participants, thanks to funding from the Office of the Dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and the Thompson Writing Program. Participants enjoy lunch, coaching and community in what’s normally a solitary activity.

“I appreciate the culture of collaboration,” said David Landes, who came to Duke this year as Assistant Professor of the Practice in Duke’s Thompson Writing Program. “In the humanities our work is intensely individualized.”

*Assistant Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics Hwanhee Hong (left) and Adam Rosenblatt, Associate Professor of the Practice in International Comparative Studies (right)*

Retreats are one of many forms of support offered by the Faculty Write program: there are also writing groups and workshops on topics such as balancing teaching and scholarship or managing large research projects.

“One of the distinguishing features of Faculty Write is the community that extends beyond one event,” Ahern-Dodson said. “Many retreats are reunions.”

After two hours of writing, Ahern-Dodson prompted the group to take a break. Some got up to stretch or grab a snack; others stepped outside to chat or stroll through the center’s labyrinth at the edge of Duke Forest.

It’s more than just dedicated writing time, Ahern-Dodson said. It’s also “learning how to work with the time they have.”

The retreats offer tips from behavioral psychology, writing studies, and other disciplines on time management, motivation, working with reader feedback, and other topics.

As they wrap up the last writing session of the day, Ahern-Dodson talks about how to keep momentum.

“Slow-downs and writing block are normal,” Ahern-Dodson said. Maybe how you wrote before isn’t working anymore, or you’re in a rut. Perhaps you’re not sure how to move forward, or maybe writing simply feels like a slog.

“There are some things you could try to get unstuck,” Ahern-Dodson said. Consider changing up your routine: when and where you write, or how long each writing session lasts.

“Protect your writing time as you would any other meeting,” Ahern-Dodson said.

Sharing weekly goals and accomplishments with other people can help too, she added.

“Celebrate each win.”

Ultimately, Ahern-Dodson says, the focus is not on productivity but on meaning, progress and satisfaction over time.

“It’s all about building a sustainable writing practice,” she said.

*Ahern-Dodson leads an end-of-semester writing retreat for Duke scholars.*

Coming soon: On Friday, Jan. 27 from 12-1 p.m., join Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement Abbas Benmamoun for a conversation about how writing works for him as a scholar and administrator. In person in Rubenstein Library 249 (Carpenter Fletcher Room)

Get Involved: Faculty and staff are invited to sign up for writing groups for spring 2023 here.

Learn more about sustainable writing practices: “The Productivity Trap: Why We Need a New Model of Faculty Writing Support,” Jennifer Ahern-Dodson and Monique Dufour. Change, January/February 2023.

A Peek Inside the Climate Situation (V)room

By Adeleine Geitner

On November 21, 2022

In Climate/Global Change, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, Environment/Sustainability

As part of this year’s Energy Week at Duke, graduate and undergraduates were able to participate in a competitive “situation room” style event in which participants were split into five teams and given seventy-five minutes to create a plan for expanding EV (electric vehicle) access in Durham.

For just over an hour in a Fuqua School of Business classroom, my fellow participants and I mulled over the complexities of an issue facing municipalities across the country and produced a variety of solutions, representative of the range of specialties within each group. One more CS-minded group proposed an app to both help residents locate charging stations and help the city collect data on the use of new EV infrastructure, while another group explored the technological and price saving perks of utility pole-mounted charging stations.

The resulting ideas were reviewed by a panel of judges who covered multiple areas of EV expertise: Jennifer Weiss, Senior Advisor for Climate Change Policy at the North Carolina Department of Transportation; Matt Abele, Director of Marketing and Communications at North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association; Sean Ackley, E-Mobility Segment Lead at Hitachi Americas, Ltd.; and Evian Patterson, Assistant Transportation Director in the Durham Department of Transportation.

The goal of Duke’s EnergyWeek is to “promote collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and professional networking” for students interested in the energy sector. The situation room event was not strictly research oriented – our team rooms had windows and we were given free supper and lemonade – but it promoted the fundamentals of research: idea generation, collaboration, and outside-of-the-box thinking.

*The victors of the 2023 EnergyWeek Situation Room* (photo: Michael Wood III)

The teams were tasked with crafting a strategy that combined technical, business, marketing, and policy considerations to increase EV penetration in Durham. The teams operated under a hypothetical $10 million budget and strategies were to align with the Justice40 initiative, the federal plan to ensure that forty percent of the benefits of new clean transit jobs flow to “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.”

Participants were encouraged to consider “potential barriers to EV adoption, the existing distribution of EV charging stations, and opportunities for community and business involvement” and to be creative.

My team was comprised of students from a range of scholarly backgrounds, from a freshman beginning a mechanical engineering track to a grad student at the Nicholas School with prior work and research in school bus electrification policy. For our plan, we spent little time discussing electric cars and instead focused on expanding access to electric micro-mobility and electrified public transportation.

*Our team consulted this map from the Durham Bike+Walk Implementation plan in determining that electric cars are not a silver bullet*
(map: durhamnc.gov)

We had many reasons for doing so. Many Durham residents don’t own cars, so the likelihood of increasing the adoption of electric cars in a timely and affordable manner seems low. Countries around the world are instead focusing on expanding e-bike access, citing, in addition to climate and affordability concerns, the desire to move away from the safety issues and traffic burden of car-centric urban design.

We saw Durham, which is expected to double in population in just twenty-five years, as a city perfectly positioned to develop around micro-mobility and robust public transportation before it’s too late and set an example for growing urban centers across the country. We used our $10 million to add bike lanes, fund electric buses, and subsidize electric bikes across income levels.

Our team placed second (no big deal!) and walked away with a full stomach and a rekindled spark to break the Duke bubble and get involved in the exciting development of the Bull City.

Duke’s Women Engineers Conquer a Texas-Sized Career Fair

By Kyla Hunter

On November 16, 2022

In Engineering, Students

I never would have imagined a scenario where a blazer, a folder of 30 resumes, and a cowboy hat were all packed together in the same suitcase.

Yet these are the items I found sprawled across my floor on the eve of Wednesday, October 20, as I prepared to fly to Houston to attend the 2022 Society of Women Engineers Conference in Houston, Texas.

*Members of the Duke Chapter of the Society of Women Engineers attend the annual conference in Houston, Texas.* *(I’m third from left in front row)*

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) is an international organization that empowers and advocates for women in engineering and technology. Founded in 1950, SWE is on a mission to establish engineering as an attractive profession to women, and provide the resources and opportunities necessary for them to pursue it. Through training programs, scholarships, and outreach, SWE builds leadership skills, creates opportunities, and promotes inclusion. The global network of women engineers across all ages and disciplines creates a valuable support system for underrepresented individuals in engineering.

The SWE conference is the world’s largest conference for women in engineering and technology. It has occurred on an annual basis ever since 1951 when the first convention was held in New York City. In the past few years, the SWE conference has been known to attract 8,000+ attendees, continuously growing and breaking attendance records.

*Duke SWE members land in Houston airport after a three hour flight from Durham, eagerly anticipating the start of the conference the next morning.*

Like many colleges, Duke has a SWE student chapter, and every year takes people to the national conference. This year, 22 students were able to attend the three-day conference, with their flights and hotel costs covered.

The weekend was full of inspirational keynote speakers, carefully crafted workshops, and endless opportunities to meet powerful and impressive female engineers from across the country. For the Duke students, the weekend was additionally a meaningful bonding experience, and a significant moment in the pursuit of our academic and professional goals.

For many attendees, the main event is the career fair, which takes place during the first and second days of the conference. Not having any experience at a nationwide conference, I was expecting an event similar to your average college career fair: cardboard posters on folding tables. This could not have been further from the truth for the SWE conference!

Companies had massive set-ups, towering displays, signs hanging from the ceiling, carpeting laid out underneath, tables and chairs, and a dozen employees representing the same company. The room itself was so big you couldn’t see one end from the other side.

The career fair, which spans two days of the conference, is a main component of the conference for many attendees. With over 300 companies in attendance, there were plentiful opportunities for internships, jobs, and networking.

Crowds began to gather for half an hour before the fair began. Once the doors opened, the waves of people surged in and immediately dispersed, weaving between the booths and racing to their first destination.

After separating from my peers and walking around a bit to get a feel for the environment, I gave myself a pep talk, pulled one resume out of my folder, and walked up to my first booth. After scanning a QR code to register, I was asked about my major and then directed to the right employee to talk to.

She scanned over my resume for about twenty seconds before slapping a post-it note on it, handing it to a man behind her, and instructing me to “go with him.”

Along with a few other nervous students, the man began leading us on a walk past all the booths. We reached the end of the room and kept walking, through a small opening in a big partition that stretched across the entire room. On the other side, we emerged into a much quieter atmosphere: an equally large room full not of booths, but of curtains. Dozens of rows of small rooms, created by curtain partitions, were set up for each company. After being directed to yet another person, I was brought inside one of the ominous curtain rooms for a spontaneous 15 minute interview.

I had heard from peers that on-site interviews are often conducted, but I was not prepared for the spontaneous and vastly accelerated nature of the process. After the interview, I was released back into the career fair to race to the next booth.

Almost every student left the conference with some level of success.

Throughout the day, constant messages were shot through various group chats announcing updates, interviews, new contacts, and other exciting revelations. It was easy to lose track of each other throughout the fair, but every notification felt like a wave of breaking news.

The conference is supposed to be an accelerated recruitment process – many people made connections or discovered opportunities that may lead to eventual jobs or internships. In an environment that was so uplifting and supportive of women, it was easy to celebrate each other’s victories, and be reminded that one person’s success was shared by all of us.

*Duke women in engineering across grades and disciplines bond and relax over dinner after a long day at the conference.*

While the first night at the hotel was spent mostly frantically preparing for interviews the next day, the second and third nights allowed plenty of time for group outings and exploring the city of Houston.

Whether looking for internships or full-time opportunities, female engineering students at Duke were brought together across grades and disciplines to share in an incredibly inspirational and memorable weekend. Through the highs and lows of the weekend, we were able to participate in the same shared experiences: stressing over interviews, navigating networking, and exploring our futures as engineers.

And, of course, one more extremely monumental memory from the trip was pretending to be part of a bachelorette party on the flight home (good thing we brought a cowboy hat!).

By Kyla Hunter, Class of ’23

Meet the Power Tools Pro Who Keeps Students Safe While They Learn by Doing

By Kyla Hunter

On November 10, 2022

In Engineering, Students

When engineering student Katie Drinkwater signed up for the Machine Shop Tools Mastery Unit for her Engineering 101 class, she was completely unsure about what to expect. As a freshman with no prior experience, she felt intimidated by the prospect of stepping foot into a place with such powerful and potentially dangerous machinery. Now a senior in Pratt and a member of Duke Motorsports, Drinkwater has since become much more comfortable spending time around lathes, bandsaws and other power equipment. Along with many other members of the Duke community, she attributes much of her positive experience to the guidance and support of Duke Machine Shop Manager, Steve Earp.

*The Welcome Night at the Student Machine Shop is an open-house event early in the semester that introduces new students into all that the Duke student machine shop has to offer.*

“When I went in to make my first part, I was very nervous and intimidated,” Drinkwater says. “I thought that I would be expected to know how to use the machines, but this couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Steve helped my partner and me with every step but didn’t infringe on our ownership of the project. I always feel free to ask questions and check in with Steve, but I am still expected to do my own work.”

Drinkwater isn’t alone. “Steve is definitely a friendly face you can rely on in the Pratt student shop. His vast skills and experience are one thing, but being able to teach people new to the shop in such an engaging way sets him apart. Steve has helped me make custom tools, solve problems that seemed impossible, and has helped me learn something new every time I walk into the shop,” says John Smalley, ME ‘23 and president of Duke Aero Society.

Managing the Student Shop for nearly 15 years, Earp is a vital and beloved mentor to all students that frequent the shop. Not only responsible for the set-up, organization, and operation of the shop, Earp also ensures that thorough safety practices are properly established and upheld. Part of this dedication to safety involved spearheading a brand new initiative: The Student Shop Managers Consortium.

*Steve Earp (left), Jennifer Ganley, Connor Gregg, Alexandra Gray, Greg Bumpass, Josh Klinger (right) gather to show new students around the machine shop during the Welcome Night.*

In 2013, following a tragic accident at Yale University that involved the death of a student using the student machine shop, Earp became determined to take action to ensure no such incidents ever occur again. “I started investigating, and trying to find other people that do my job at other universities,” he explained. After sending out an email to dozens of other engineering schools, Earp was left with no responses. However, he refused to let this deter him. “I had to drill down over the next two years and find that one guy or gal that operates and manages that shop,” he recalls. One by one, Earp built a network across the country, eventually organizing and hosting the first conference here at Duke University in 2015 with about 65 student shop managers. Earp recalls the positive feedback from all the attendees, revealing that this was the first time these individuals with the same job had been able to communicate with those in similar positions: “nobody ever knew that there was somebody like them somewhere else.” Since then, the conference has occurred on an annual basis, hosted by different universities from Yale to Washington University in St. Louis, and even virtually during the pandemic. Most importantly, this network has allowed for more conversation and accountability in making student safety a priority. Demonstrating his passion for student shops and commitment to student safety, Earp was recently named the President of this organization.

The emphasis on safety is something Drinkwater has experienced since the first time she stepped in the shop to complete her Tools Mastery assignment. “A machine shop can be a very dangerous environment — something Steve knows from personal experience — so he and Greg take safety training very seriously,” she explains. “They want every student to respect the environment without being afraid of it.” After completing the very thorough online and in-person components of the safety training, Drinkwater felt proud to pick up her shop badge. In a sentiment echoed by all of the engineering community, Drinkwater concludes, “I feel very lucky to have Steve as our shop manager. His wealth of experience, genuine interest in students’ learning, and good-humored disposition are extremely valuable additions to the Pratt community.”

The Need for Title IX in STEM

By Jakaiyah Franklin

On October 10, 2022

In Behavior/Psychology, Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Engineering, Faculty, Science Communication & Education, Statistics, Students

The Panel:

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of Title IX, which was intended to make sex discrimination in education illegal, a panel of Duke women met on Thursday, September 29 to talk about whether Title IX could change STEM, (Science Technology, Engineering and Math). Unfortunately, the answer was not simple.

But just through the sharing of the statistics relevant to this problem, the stories, and their solutions, one could start to understand the depth of this problem. One takeaway was that all women in STEM, whether they be student, professor, or director, have faced gender discrimination.

The student panelists after a successful forum

Down to the Statistics:

Dr. Sherryl Broverman, a Duke professor of the practice in biology and global health, gave the audience an overview. Of all of Duke’s regular ranked, tenured-track faculty, only 30% are women. In contrast, women make up 60% of the non-tenure track faculty. Dr. Broverman said men are promoted in Duke at a higher frequency. This is especially seen with the associate professor title because, on average, men are associate professors for 4 to 5 years; whereas women are associate professors for up to 9 years.

To give an example, senior Nasya Bernard-Lucien, a student panelist who studied Biomedical Engineering and then Neuroscience informed me that she has had a total of two women professors in her entire STEM career. This is a common pattern here at Duke because taking a STEM class that has a woman professor is as rare as finding a non-stressed Duke student.

Dr. Kisha Daniels (left) and Dr. Whitney McCoy (right)

The Beginning of a Girl’s Career in STEM

This disproportionate demographic of women professors in STEM is not a new occurrence with Duke or the rest of the world because the disproportion of women in STEM can be seen as early as middle school. Two of the student panelists noted that during their middle school career, they were not chosen to join an honors STEM program and had to push their school’s administration when they asked to take more advanced STEM classes.

Dr. Kisha Daniels, an associate professor of the practice in education said on a faculty panel that one of her daughters was asked by her male peers, “what are you doing here?” when she attended her middle school’s honors math class. Gender discrimination in STEM begins in early childhood, and it extends its reach as long as women continue to be in a STEM field, and that is particularly evident here at Duke.

Women in STEM at Duke

The last panel of the Title IX @ 50 event was the student panel which consisted of undergraduate and graduate students. Even though they were all from different backgrounds, all acknowledged the gender disparity within STEM classes.

Student Bentley Choi said she was introduced to this experience of gender discrimination when she first arrived at Duke from South Korea. She noted how she was uncomfortable and how it was hard to ask for help while being one of the few women in her physics class. One would have hoped that Duke would provide a more welcoming environment to her, but that is not the case, and it is also not an isolated incident. Across the panel, all of the women have experienced discomfort in their STEM classes due to being one of the few girls in there.

The Future of Title IX

How can Title IX change these issues? Right now, Title IX and STEM are not as connected as they need to be; in fact, Title IX, in the past, has been used to attack programs created to remedy the gender disparity in STEM. So, before Title IX can change STEM, it needs to change itself.

Title IX needs to address that this problem is a systemic issue and not a standalone occurrence. However, for this change to happen, Dr. Whitney McCoy, a research scientist in Child and Family Policy, said it perfectly, “we need people of all backgrounds to voice the same opinion to create policy change.”

So, talk to your peers about this issue because the more people who understand this situation, the chances of creating a change increases. The last thing that needs to occur is that 50 years in the future, there will be similar panels like this one that talk about this very issue, and there are no panels that talk about how we, in the present, fixed it.

Post by Jakaiyah Franklin, Class of 2025

Meet New Blogger Kyla: Humans Grow up. Ideas Do, Too.

By Guest Post

On September 22, 2022

In Engineering, Environment/Sustainability, Science Communication & Education, Students

If you asked my eight-year-old self what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer would have been, resoundingly, “an inventor!” It was around this time that I also decided, with surprising assuredness for a shy second grader, that I would one day build a saltwater-powered car.

I must have heard the idea somewhere, although to this day I don’t quite recall where. Perhaps it was a story on the radio. NPR was a constant background noise in the basement where I spent countless hours playing and tinkering alongside my father in his hobby shop. Or maybe it was buried somewhere in a book or science magazine. They were often stacked in neat piles, filling bookcases in many corners of our house. It also could have floated across the dinner table in conversations between my parents and older siblings. Everyday talk of high school biology and current events seemed light years out of the grasp of my eight-year-old brain.

Regardless of where it came from, the idea stuck. Before I knew what it meant to conduct research or study engineering, I found myself charmed by novel ideas and drawn to the possibility of discovery. For some reason, this “car that runs on salt water” took shelter in my mind and secured itself as the perfect idea: an ingenious invention that was good for the planet. At the time, of course, I never thought about how this whimsical, far-fetched idea was fundamentally tied to my core interests and values. Now, however, as a 21-year-old senior studying mechanical engineering, passionate about renewable energy technology and protecting the planet, it all makes perfect sense.

My interest in engineering is, at its core, a love for creativity, combined with a desire to solve problems. A fondness for physics certainly helps too, but that came much later. As a child, the desire to practice creativity manifested primarily as a love for art. Some of my earliest childhood memories are toiling away at my little table in the corner of the living room, carefully sorting the crayons in my tin Crayola box. Today, I practice creativity in my critical thinking, brainstorming, and implementation of the iterative design process.

At an elementary school science fair, I presented my model V8 engine and explained how it worked. I was drawn to many different interests before I settled on engineering, but it’s clear that the passion was always there.

The other facet that drew me towards engineering, the desire to solve problems, evolved from an early love for nature and a passion for environmentalism. I remember seeing my grandparents’ devastated home in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and the noticeable decline in pollinators to my mother’s garden. In high school, when I heard the term “environmental engineering,” it was the first time I realized such a field existed. I immediately felt the various pieces of my interests and values click together. There are many ways to be creative and to solve problems, but for me, the combination led down a path towards pursuing engineering.

An entry from my second-grade journal, declaring my dearly held beliefs. In many ways, nothing has changed (including my ability to spell).

Despite the way I’ve laid it out, this is not to say there was a linear path between latching onto an eccentric notion as an eight-year-old, and deciding to pursue my current career as a soon-to-be graduate. Looking back now, I can see the symbolism in this cornerstone of an idea. With hindsight, I recognize why it appealed to different facets of my just-blossoming identity, and the ways in which I returned to it over the next several years. However, this is what is bound to happen when you expose yourself to as many new ideas as possible: one (at least) will catch your attention. The point is not to latch onto the first idea you stumble upon and pursue it relentlessly. The point is to keep an open mind to all ideas – and pay careful attention to the ones that light up inside your brain. The ones that stick in the back of your mind, and continuously pop up at unsuspecting times.

One of my favorite serendipitous moments in life is when, soon after learning something new, that newfound idea pops up somewhere else. It’s like receiving an unexpected gift in the form of previously inaccessible appreciation. Imagine turning over a stone and happening to uncover an insect that you just spent all night studying. It feels purely by chance, but it’s not quite.

The more you expose yourself to new ideas, the more they will appear. You never know when a story you stumble across by accident will move you to action, or lead to something bigger. A magazine I stumbled across by chance led to a research topic of an entire semester. A book I read in high school came up in an interview I had last week. An idea I heard at eight years old about an eco-friendly car perhaps started a life-long captivation with science that led me to become an engineer. Our life is made up of decisions that are based on millions of data points, determined by our history, background, and the types of ideas we surround ourselves with daily.

As a blogger for the Duke Research Blog, my goal is to make it easier for more people to have more exposure to more ideas. Each new idea has the potential to build bridges, whether expanding to new fields, or building upon an existing network of knowledge. Expanding our realm of understanding allows for challenging perspectives and broadening understandings. These are not ideas for the sake of ideas, but for the larger goal of enabling meaningful connections with others.

When more people have access to more ideas, everyone benefits. However, there’s no denying that much of the research going on at Duke is very high-level, usually going unread by much of the student body. Other fascinating content goes unnoticed simply due to the busy lives of Duke students, and the sheer volume of exciting events. (If only we could all be multiple places at once.) My goal is to take ideas – whether overly intimidating or underappreciated—and present them in a way that is more accessible for anyone who is interested.

When I first heard of the idea of salt-water running cars, the idea was just that: an idea. The frenzy began in 2007 when John Kanzius, an American engineer, accidentally discovered how to “burn” salt water while attempting to research a cure for cancer. Today, the QUANT e-Sport Limousine is an all-electric sports car concept that uses an electrolyte flow cell, powered by salt water. It actually works, and was authorized for on-road testing in Germany a few years ago soon after its debut. It is many years from authorization, and it will likely be an even longer time before it is a viable option from an economic standpoint, but the progress is apparent.

Fifteen years since my infatuation with this idea, I can’t help but feel slightly emotionally connected to it. Humans grow up. Ideas do, too. I did not invent the first car that runs on salt water, but I am eternally grateful for every new idea that fuels my curiosity, shapes my values, and expands my current perspectives.

Post by Kyla Hunter, Class of 2023

Duke First-Year Founds Cryptocurrency Security Startup, Harpie

By Anna Gotskind

On March 21, 2022

In Business/Economics, Computers/Technology, Data, Engineering, Students

“Crypto is scaling so quickly but security systems are still the same as they were in 2013.” Those are the words of Daniel Chong, a recent Duke student whose new startup aims to change that.

One of the largest challenges within cryptocurrency is security. The most impactful application of cryptocurrency thus far is decentralized finance (DeFi). DeFi eliminates intermediaries by allowing people and businesses to conduct financial transactions through blockchain technology as opposed to working through banks or other corporations. However, as a result, people are personally responsible for securing their assets.

When engaging with cryptocurrency people generally use a trading platform and a wallet. Cryptocurrency trading platforms like Coinbase, Binance, and Crypto.com allow people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies using USD or other cryptocurrencies. However, in order to use crypto, one must transfer some of it into a wallet.

As with conventional currency, crypto wallets are not required in order to use cryptocurrency but they allow individuals to store their tokens in one place, easily retrieve them and send it to other individuals or organizations (i.e. buying non-fungible tokens). Some of the most popular wallets include Coinbase wallet, Metamask, and Electrum.

These wallets are not only password-protected but provide each user with a seed phrase or a series of words generated by one’s cryptocurrency wallet. This phrase, like a password, provides access to the crypto associated with that wallet.

The catch is, if an individual gets locked out of their wallet and cannot remember or does not have access to their seed phrase, all of their money will be lost. This is a major problem in the space and people have lost millions of dollars to lost seed phrases and inaccessible wallets. In fact, 20% of all existing Bitcoin tokens have been misplaced.

Furthermore, in the past, it was already hard enough to secure one’s crypto wallets but now people have several wallets, each with their own unique seed phrase and passcodes making it all the more difficult. In the Fall of 2020, Daniel Chong, a Duke first-year at the time, identified this wallet security problem.

“Crypto is scaling so quickly but security systems are still the same as they were in 2013.”
Daniel Chong

Having grown up in Las Vegas, Chong was used to fast-paced environments and unique challenges. During high school, Chong started coding as a hobby.

“I just wanted to build something,” he explained

The first project he built was a website for a research paper he had in his high school psychology class. In 2018 Chong was introduced to solidity, a programming language that’s main purpose is to develop smart contracts for the Ethereum blockchain. If you are unfamiliar with blockchain, please refer to my previous article here.

Chong matriculated to Duke during a period of transition, the Fall of 2020. As a result of being sent home due to COVID-19 in the Spring and having to shift to online meetings, many on-campus clubs were struggling. Early on Chong met Manmit Singh, a Junior at the time and the President of the Duke Blockchain Lab.

Even though Chong was only a first-year, he had experience coding in solidity and ended up aiding Singh in revamping Duke Blockchain Lab so students could continue engaging with and learning about blockchain despite the pandemic. Additionally, he ran a virtual course on web3 and solidity development for other club members.

Despite the fact that Chong was attending classes, involved in clubs, and working part-time, he began talking to his brother Noah who was a senior at Georgia Tech about once again, building something.

After working on building a security solution for crypto wallets for about a year, Chong and his brother received venture capital funding for their startup Harpie: a simple crypto protection plan that scales with you.

Chong explained that venture capitalists are very excited about crypto right now, especially back in November of 2021 when crypto was in a bull market and bitcoin was at a market high of 60,000.

Harpie is a web app that allows users to connect all of their wallets to individualized protection plans. This means that if you have a Harpie protection plan and someone hacks your wallet or you get locked out, you can go to the Harpie web app and transfer your funds from the unusable wallet to a new one.

Additionally, users are able to choose the degree of security their Harpie account has. Users can regain access to their fund via email, phone, or (personal recommendation) 2-factor authentication. Ultimately, for $8.99/month you can protect as many wallets, with any sum of funds, as you want.

After working for just over a year, Harpie launched on February 14th, 2022. The next weekend Chong and his brother headed to ETHDenver, the largest Ethereum conference, to promote Harpie and compete in the Hackathon. For those who are unfamiliar, hackathons are competitive, sprint-like events where computer programmers and others are involved in software development work to build something over a condensed period of time.

Over 10,000 people participated in the ETHDenver hackathon in person and over 30,000 participated virtually for over $1 million in bounties and prizes, as well as up to $2 million in investment capital.

While the teams had 36 hours to build a project, Chong and his brother managed to build there’s in 4-5 hours. They did this by quickly creating a front-runner bot/flash bot to help people avoid getting hacked by detecting and halting transactions to unauthorized addresses.

The brothers not only successfully built the bot but also placed top 10 in the overall hackathon and had the opportunity to present their project.

While presenting, Chong also received questions from Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum. He explained this as a very “nerve-wracking experience” and added that Buterin asked very technical questions such as what the miners’ extractable value would be.

Chong and his brother (left) onstage with Vitalik Buterin (right) presenting at ETHDenver

In the future, Chong would be open to entering more hackathons but right now is more interested in growing his startup. Currently, Chong is taking time off from school to focus on Harpie and to, ultimately, revolutionize security systems as they relate to online assets.

“Rest easy knowing your crypto is safe.”
Daniel Chong

What’s Up In Space? 3 Experts Weigh In

By Meghna Datta

On March 8, 2022

In Computers/Technology, Engineering, Environment/Sustainability

On Friday, February 25^th, 2022 the brand-new Duke Space Diplomacy Lab (SDL) had an exciting launch with its first panel event: hosting journalists Ramin Skibba, Loren Grush, and Jeff Foust for a conversation on challenges in space within the next year. Moderated by Benjamin L. Schmitt of Harvard University, the conversation was in line with the SDL’s goals to convene a multidisciplinary group of individuals for the development of research, policy proposals, and solutions to mitigate risks in space.

In conversation, three key themes arose:

U.S Russia Relations

With the current Russian invasion in Ukraine and the subsequent strain on U.S-Russia relations, the geopolitics of space has been in the limelight. Control of outer space has been a contentious issue for the two countries since the Cold War, out of which an uneasy yet necessary alliance was forged. Faust remarked that he doesn’t see U.S-Russia space relations lasting beyond the end of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2030. Grush added that before then, it will be interesting to see whether U.S-Russia relations will sour in the realm of space, simply because it’s questionable whether the ISS could continue without Russian support. However, Russia and NASA have historically acted symbiotically when it comes to space, and it’s unlikely that either party can afford to break ties.

2. Space debris

Major global players, from the U.S to China to India to Russia, are all guilty of generating space debris. Tons of dead satellites and bits of spacecraft equipment litter the areas around Earth – including an estimated 34,000 pieces of space junk bigger than 10 centimeters – and if this debris hit something, it could be disastrous. Grush paints the picture well by comparing spacecrafts to a car on a road – except we just trust that the satellite will maneuver out of the way in the event of a collision, autonomously, and there are absolutely no rules of the road to regulate movement for any other vehicles.

A computer-generated graphic from NASA showing objects in Earth orbit that are currently being tracked. 95% of the objects in this illustration are orbital debris, i.e., not functional satellites.

Skibba suggests that the best thing to do might be to make sure that more stuff doesn’t enter space, since the invention of technologies to clean up existing space debris will take a while. He also points to efforts to program new spacecrafts with graveyard orbit and deorbit capabilities as a necessary step.

3. Who is in charge of space?

Faust explained that commercial space exploration is moving incredibly fast, and legal regulations are struggling to keep up. Tons of companies are planning to launch mega-constellations in the next few years, for reasons that include things like providing higher-speed Internet access – something that we can all benefit from. Yet with new players in space comes the question of: who is in charge of space? The Artemis Accords are the existing rules that govern space at an international level, but they function as an agreement, not law, and with more players in space comes a need for legally binding terms of conduct. But as Grush puts it, “there’s a tension between the nimble, rapid commercial environment and a regulatory environment that wasn’t quite prepared to respond.”

The eight signees of the Artemis Accords

Beyond who rules over space, there’s also the question of decolonizing space. Skibba brings up that amidst a growing number of mega-constellations of satellites being launched, there are key questions being asked about who has access to space, and how we can level the playing field for more countries and companies to enter space exploration.

Space is uncharted territory, and to understand it is no small feat. While science has come incredibly far in terms of technological capabilities in space, it’s clear that we don’t know what we don’t know. But with a more multilateral, global approach to exploring space, we may just be able to go even farther.

Post by Meghna Datta, Class of 2023

Following the people and events that make up the research community at Duke

Category: Engineering Page 1 of 13

Origami Robots: How Technology Moves at the Micro Level

Design challenge feels like fun, actually earns credits

For Weary Scholars, a Moment to Regroup, Reconnect…and Write

A Peek Inside the Climate Situation (V)room

Duke’s Women Engineers Conquer a Texas-Sized Career Fair

Meet the Power Tools Pro Who Keeps Students Safe While They Learn by Doing

The Need for Title IX in STEM

Meet New Blogger Kyla: Humans Grow up. Ideas Do, Too.

Duke First-Year Founds Cryptocurrency Security Startup, Harpie

What’s Up In Space? 3 Experts Weigh In