These 2021-2022 Project Teams Are Recruiting Additional Team Members

May 24, 2021

All current Duke undergraduate students and incoming and current Duke graduate students are invited to apply by June 9 at 5:00 p.m.

recruitment.

Interested in joining a 2021-2022 Bass Connections project team?

Project teams bring together faculty, postdocs, graduate students, undergraduates and external partners to tackle complex societal challenges in interdisciplinary research teams. Teams generally work together over nine to 12 months, and students receive academic credit for participating.

Seventeen project teams are seeking additional team members to begin work in Fall 2021. Students may apply to up to three project teams using the online application. The deadline to apply is June 9 at 5:00 p.m.

Please note that spots on teams are limited as the majority of positions were filled during the main application cycle last spring. Students interested in applying for a Bass Connections project team during the main application cycle will be able to explore 2022-2023 teams in January 2022.

Who is eligible to apply?

All current Duke undergraduate students and incoming and current Duke graduate students are eligible to apply.

Please note that incoming first-year undergraduate students and DKU students who do not plan to be at Duke for at least one semester during the 2021-2022 academic year are not eligible to apply. Students who have already accepted a spot on a 2021-2022 Bass Connections team are also not eligible to apply.

Check out Student FAQs to learn more about eligibility and preview the online application.

What kinds of opportunities are available?

Browse the list below to learn which teams are still recruiting new members. Please visit the relevant project team pages and read the project descriptions carefully to learn about the unique opportunities available on each team. Many teams are seeking students with specific backgrounds or skills; several teams are seeking graduate students in leadership roles.

Project teams last for two semesters and include course credit. Check out How Project Teams Work and Student FAQs to learn more.

Project Teams Recruiting New Members

American Predatory Lending and the Global Financial Crisis
  • Master’s/professional students only; project manager opportunity available
  • This team is specifically seeking students for leadership roles, including project manager and subteam leader; preference for applicants with subject-matter expertise in the mortgage market, oral history interviewing, policy analysis and/or data analysis 

This project team will deepen the public’s understanding of the policy and market dynamics in the run-up to the financial crisis and explain the divergent responses among federal and state/local policymakers as well as the implications for preventing the next financial crisis.

Developing Predictive Models for COVID-19 with Wearables Data
  • Master’s/professional students only
  • Preference for applicants with backgrounds in data science, digital health and machine learning/deep learning

This project team will develop digital biomarkers associated with COVID-19, provide visualizations of these biomarkers for both participants and researchers, and recruit members of underrepresented groups through community outreach. 

Digital Health Communities: A Hidden Resource for Shared Healing
  • All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

This project team will research digital health communities across a variety of social media platforms to better understand their impacts on patient health.

Empowering Prevention of Cervical Cancer: Women-inspired Strategies for Health (WISH)
  • Doctoral students and master’s/professional students only
  • Preference for MPP and MBA students to help lead costing and policy efforts and graduate students in the humanities to work on oral histories 

This project team will conduct evaluations of cost-effectiveness, policymaking and community awareness/storytelling for cervical cancer screening and treatment to reduce access barriers among low-income women in Peru.

Equitable Community Research Partnerships
  • All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply; project manager opportunity available
  • Preference for applicants with backgrounds in qualitative data collection/analysis (interviews), quantitative data collection/analysis (surveys) or case study methodology

This project team will examine and synthesize existing literature on challenges in community-engaged research, from both the community and university lens to improve Duke-Durham community partnerships.

Eye Tracking: Objective Assessment for Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in Youth Athletes
  • Master’s/professional students only

This project team will assess how head impact exposure may contribute to observable deficits in oculomotor response that can be tracked and used for diagnostic purposes.

Field Testing a Mercury Capture System for Artisanal Gold Mining
  • All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
  • Preference for applicants with interests in any of the following: rules affecting the gold and/or mercury trade; social sciences/economics literature review; and/or programming to help develop website for public sharing
Fostering Social Integration of Displaced Populations through the Performing Arts
  • All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

This project team will examine how the performing arts can produce forms of cultural citizenship, promote social integration and create ties with displaced populations.

Movement through Racial Healing and Justice
  • All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

This project team will partner with the Duke Center for Truth, Racial Healing to investigate the Center’s Rx Racial Healing Circles (RxRHCs) and further racial healing research at Duke and beyond.

Ocean Evidence Gap Map
  • All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

This project team will assess the efficiency, performance and usability of existing machine learning tools and approaches for evidence synthesis to understand the relationships between select conservation interventions and social-ecological outcomes.

Open Design Studio: Participatory Solutions for Human Flourishing
  • All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
  • Preference for applicants with backgrounds in social sciences, humanities, education, policy, health and/or computer science as well as applicants who have interest or experience working with underserved and underrepresented populations

This project team will employ an equity-centered innovation approach to co-create solutions across social sectors, thereby elevating the voices of stakeholders who have traditionally been excluded from problem-solving and decision-making processes.

Regenerative Grazing to Mitigate Climate Change
  • All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

This project team aims to facilitate a dramatic expansion in the adoption and success of regenerative grazing systems in North Carolina and the Southeast.

Revaluing Care in the Global Economy
  • Doctoral students and master’s/professional students only
  • Preference for applicants with backgrounds in public policy, international development, political economy and/or feminist theory as well as fluency in a foreign language

This project team will investigate both historical and transformative models of care evaluation to build a broadly accessible resource hub for CARE (Community Access for Research and Education).

Understanding Monkey Movement Using Conservation Technology
  • All current undergraduate students and master’s/professional students only
  • Preference for applicants with experience or strong interest in conservation biology, animal behavior and/or forest restoration

This project aims to inform forest restoration and spider monkey conservation on the Azuero Peninsula, Panama, through researching primate seed dispersal and fostering local partnerships.

Understanding Variations in Hospital Costs in Support of Value-Based Care Decisions
  • All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

This project team will collect, collate and analyze newly available healthcare pricing date to characterize the variation in commercial and/or government-sponsored payments for common general surgical procedures; investigate the link between hospital and insurer market concentration and price variation; and examine the association between price variation and area-level measures of population health by geopolitical boundaries.

Visualizing Systemic Housing Inequality
  • All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

This project will use the tools of live performance and big data to create an interactive installation to visualize the debts and burdens of injustice.

Wired for Learning: Enhanced Pedagogy for K-2 Teachers
  • All current undergraduate students and master’s/professional students only
  • Preference for applicants with experience in curriculum development, instructional design, video production and/or website creation

This project team will build on Project Bright IDEA by enhancing teachers’ instructional practices to ensure all students have access to an assets-based, rigorous curriculum that will raise their achievement, reveal their full potential and prepare them for their future. 

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