2017 Projects
The aim of this data expedition was to give students an introduction to stable isotopes and how the data can be used to understand trophic dynamics. Within a 3-hour lab students were introduced to methane seeps and the difference between photosynthetic and chemosynthetic carbon, before working through an analysis of...
Gary Koplik (Masters in Economics and Computation) and Matt Tribby (CompSci, Statistics) spent ten weeks investigating the burden of rare diseases on the Duke University Health System (DUHS). They worked with a massive set of ICD diagnosis codes and visit data provided by DUHS. Project Results: The team created cohorts of patients with and without rare disease diagnosis codes...
William Willis (Mechanical Engineering, Physics) and Qitong Gao (Masters Mechanical Engineering) spent ten weeks with the goal of mapping the ocean floor autonomously with high resolution and high efficiency. Their efforts were part of a team taking part in the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, and they made extensive use of simulation software built from...
Over ten weeks, Biology major Jacob Sumner and Neuroscience major Julianna Zhang joined forces with Biostatistics Masters student Jing Lyu to analyze potential drug diversion in the Duke Medical Center. Early detection of drug diversion assists health care providers in helping patients recover from their condition, as well as mitigate the effects on any patients under...
Over ten weeks, Public Policy major Amy Jiang and Mathematics and Computer Science major Kelly Zhang joined forces with Economics Masters student Amirhossein Khoshro to investigate academic hiring patterns across American universities, as well as analyzing the educational background of faculty. They worked closely with Academic Analytics, a provider of data and solutions for universities in the U.S....
John Benhart (CompSci, Math) and Esko Brummel (Masters in Bioethics and Science Policy) spent ten weeks analyzing current and potential scholarly collaborations within the community of Duke faculty. They worked closely with the leadership of the Scholars@Duke database. Project Results: The team built an interactive similarity network of Duke scholars, with weighted edges derived from textual...
Angelo Bonomi (Chemistry), Remy Kassem (ECE, Math), and Han (Alessandra) Zhang (Biology, CompSci) spent ten weeks analyzing data from social networks for communities of people facing chronic conditions. The social network data, provided by MyHealth Teams, contained information shared by community members about their diagnoses, symptoms, co-morbidities, treatments, and details about each treatment. Project Results: The team performed extensive data cleaning,...
Zijing Huang (Statistics, Finance), Artem Streltsov (Masters Economics), and Frank Yin (ECE, CompSci, Math) spent ten weeks exploring how Internet of Things (IoT) data could be used to understand potential online financial behavior. They worked closely with analytical and strategic personnel from TD Bank, who provided them with a massive dataset compiled by Epsilon, a global company that specializes in...
Over ten weeks, Mathematics/Economics majors Khuong (Lucas) Do and Jason Law joined forces with Analytical Political Economy Masters student Feixiao Chen to analyze the spati-temporal distribution of birth addresses in North Carolina. The goal of the project was to understand how/whether the distributions of different demographic categories (white/black, married/unmarried, etc.) differed, and how these differences connected to a variety of...
Furthering the work of a 2016 Data+ team in predictive modeling of pancreatic cancer from electronic medical record (EMR) data, students Siwei Zhang (Masters Biostatistics) and Jake Ukleja (Computer Science) spent ten weeks building a model to predict pancreatic cancer from Electronic Medical Records (EMR) data. They worked with nine years worth of EMR data, including ICD9 diagnostic codes, that...
Over ten weeks, Math/CompSci majors Benjamin Chesnut and Frederick Xu joined forces with International Comparative Studies major Katharyn Loweth to understand the myriad academic pathways traveled by undergraduate students at Duke. They focused on data from Mathematics and the Duke Global Health Institute, and worked closely with departmental leadership from both areas. Project Results: The team created...
Over ten weeks, BME and ECE majors Serge Assaad and Mark Chen joined forces with Mechanical Engineering Masters student Guangshen Ma to automate the diagnosis of vascular anomalies from Doppler Ultrasound data, with goals of improving diagnostic accuracy and reducing physician time spent on simple diagnoses. They worked closely with Duke Surgeon Dr. Leila Mureebe and Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Wilkins Aquino....
Liuyi Zhu (Computer Science, Math), Gilad Amitai (Masters, Statistics), Raphael Kim (Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering), and Andreas Badea (East Chapel Hill High School) spent ten weeks streamlining and automating the process of electronically rejuvenating medieval artwork. They used a 14th-century altarpiece by Francescussio Ghissi as a working example. Project Results: The team built a prototype app which transforms...
Felicia Chen (Computer Science, Statistics), Nikhil Pulimood (Computer Science, Mathematics), and James Wang (Statistics, Public Policy) spent ten weeks working with Counter Tools, a local nonprofit that provides support to over a dozen state health departments. The project goal was to understand how open source data can lead to the creation of a national database of...
A team of students led by Dr. Shanna Sprinkle of Duke Surgery will combine success metrics of Duke Surgery residents from a set of databases and create a user interface for residency program directors and possibly residents themselves to view and better understand residency program performance. Using MySQL or Oracle, students will...
Selen Berkman (ECE, CompSci), Sammy Garland (Math), and Aaron VanSteinberg (CompSci, English) spent ten weeks undertaking a data-driven analysis of the representation of women in film and in the film industry, with special attention to a metric called the Bechdel Test. They worked with data from a number of sources, including fivethirtyeight.com and the-numbers.com. Project Results: The team showed that movies which pass the Bechdel...
Boning Li (Masters Electrical and Computer Engineering), Ben Brigman (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Gouttham Chandrasekar (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Shamikh Hossain (Computer Science, Economics), and Trishul Nagenalli (Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science) spent ten weeks creating datasets of electricity access indicators that can be used to train a classifier to detect electrified villages. This coming academic year, a Bass...
Lauren Fox (Cultural Anthropology) and Elizabeth Ratliff (Statistics, Global Health) spent ten weeks analyzing and mapping pedestrian, bicycle, and motor vehicle data provided by Durham’s Department of Transportation. This project was a continuation of a seminar on “ghost bikes” taught by Prof. Harris Solomon. Project Results: After extensive data cleaning and consultation with Transportation planners, the team...
Building off the work of a 2016 Data+ team, Yu Chen (Economics), Peter Hase (Statistics), and Ziwei Zhao (Mathematics), spent ten weeks working closely with analytical leadership at Duke’s Office of University Development. The project goal was to identify distinguishing characteristics of major alumni donors and to model their lifetime giving behavior. Project Results: Working with a large data set...
Over ten weeks, Computer Science majors Daniel Bass-Blue and Susie Choi joined forces with Biomedical Engineering major Ellie Wood to prototype interactive interfaces from Type II diabetics’ mobile health data. Their specific goals were to encourage patient self-management and to effectively inform clinicians about patient behavior between visits. Project Results: The team worked with patient data from...
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