News

It’s Not Too Late to Join a 2025-2026 Bass Connections Project Team

Apply by June 9 at 5 p.m.

More than twenty 2025-2026 project teams are now recruiting additional student team members to begin work in Fall 2025.

Students may apply to up to three project teams using our online application. The deadline to apply is June 9 at 5 p.m.

Bass Connections 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.

Please note that spots on these teams are limited because most 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 2026-2027 project teams in January 2026.

Eligibility

All current Duke undergraduate students and incoming and current Duke graduate students are eligible to apply. DKU students may only apply if they will be studying at Duke for at least one semester during the 2025-2026 academic year.

Incoming first-year undergraduate students and students who have already accepted a spot on a 2025-2026 Bass Connections team are not eligible to apply.

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

Project Teams Recruiting Students

Please visit the project team pages linked below 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 student project managers.

Project teams offer course credit and last for two semesters. Check out how project teams work and Student FAQs to learn more.

Activism, Music, and the Rosetta Reitz Archive

All Duke current or incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students interested in archives, public history, U.S. history, technology and/or cultural studies

In 1979, the writer, activist and record producer Rosetta Reitz started Rosetta Records, the first and only record label specializing in women’s jazz and blues music, dedicated to re-releasing forgotten and underappreciated recordings. Active into the 1990s, Rosetta Records released 19 albums with songs performed by over 90 women. This team will examine contracts, promotional posters, marginal notes and letters to and from Rosetta Reitz to better understand Reitz as a music professional, activist and individual.

Advancing Community-Based Models of Health and Social Care in North Carolina

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students interested in social determinants of health, health equity, child and family health, the integration of health and social care, and community-driven models to address health challenges

North Carolina Medicaid is at the forefront of addressing unmet health-related social needs through innovative policies, programs and services such as the Healthy Opportunities Pilots and Integrated Care for Kids. This project team will investigate the organizational traits of community-based organizations engaged in these programs to inform recommendations to support, sustain and scale their capacity to meet health-related social needs in the state.

Advancing Equity in Coastal and Marine Restoration

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

Ecosystem restoration has significant potential to address global environmental challenges. However, many conservation efforts have led to social harm, inspiring critique of past restoration and conservation strategies and calls for more equitable future projects. This project team will collaborate with a global team of research and practitioner partners to understand the diverse ways that equity is currently defined and operationalized in coastal and marine restoration.

Alcohol Use Behavioral Phenotyping Test for Global Populations

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students interested in global health, data analysis (quantitative and qualitative), machine learning and experience with coding (e.g., R, Python, Firebase)

Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for premature mortality and life-long disability. This project builds on the work of previous teams that created the Alcohol Use Behavioral Phenotyping Test (AUBPT), a virtual tool that uses games and tasks to assess the user’s risk of AUD. The team will expand data collection at multiple global sites and pilot the AUBPT app in Brazil, Tanzania, India and North Carolina.

Building STEM and Community Identity Through Design Thinking

All current Duke undergraduate students may apply
Preference for students interested in STEM education and community outreach/engagement

Durham ranks in the top ten in cities in the U.S. for emerging STEM innovation, but many North Carolina K-12 students lag in science and math, hindering their access to local STEM jobs. This project team will evaluate the components of a middle- and high-school engineering experience with the aim of increasing STEM knowledge and retention while bolstering community identity.

Climate Change Impacts on Farmed and Wild Oysters

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students interested in visiting the Duke Marine Lab in Beaufort, N.C.
Project manager opportunity available (paid)

Oysters contribute many ecosystem services to coastal communities, support commercial and recreational fisheries and hold considerable economic and cultural value in North Carolina. This team will leverage Duke’s oyster farm at the Marine Lab in Beaufort, North Carolina to monitor and evaluate multiple environmental parameters that contribute to oyster mortality, particularly during the summer when mortality rates tend to be at their highest.

Deep Multi-Modal Detection of Early Alzheimer’s Disease

All Duke current or incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students with experience in Python and PyTorch, backgrounds in computer science or statistics, and interest in applying deep learning to medical imaging

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, about 6.9 million people in the U.S. have Alzheimer’s disease (AD). That number is projected to jump to 12.7 million by 2050. This project team will identify novel MRI-based biomarkers that can improve early Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and predict disease progression by detecting subtle patterns and alterations in brain topology.

Digital/Visual Archives of War and Conflict

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

The Israel-Gaza war has generated an unprecedented volume of digital imagery, particularly on social media. This project will explore the relationship between war, visual media and archiving, with a particular emphasis on the ways that wars have been recorded and preserved by a range of actors and institutions in digital and social media.

Disparity in Knowledge of Genetic Testing in Head and Neck Cancer

All current or incoming Duke graduate students may apply

Racial and ethnic disparities in head and neck cancer (HNC) are a pressing public health concern, with Black patients consistently facing worse survival outcomes. This project team will conduct a mixed-method study of the genetic testing landscape in head and neck cancer using both local data from Duke and national data.

Evaluating Impacts of Debt-for-Nature Swaps on Debt, Climate and Biodiversity

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

Debt-for-nature swaps (DfNS) were first introduced in 1984 to reduce the debt burden of low-income countries in exchange for their commitment to environmental protection. In the 2020s, DfNS have emerged as a potential tool for alleviating debt burdens. This project team will analyze five recent DfNS in Belize, Ecuador, El Salvador, Bahamas and Barbados to evaluate how these new swaps measure up with respect to financial impact, conservation impact, sovereignty concerns and transparency.

Fostering Climate Resilience Through Education and Arts

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students who are interested in using art to connect with kids and local communities about nature, climate and resilience

As climate hazards increase in intensity and frequency, resilience is needed more than ever. This project team will expand a middle school resilience curriculum to include puppetry and create youth-led puppetry resilience story community events to expand the role of education, art and storytelling in fostering environmental literacy and resiliency.

Home Design for the Visually Impaired: A Path to Independence

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students with background in computer science
Project manager opportunity available (paid)

Low vision, defined as permanent loss of vision that cannot be corrected with glasses, surgery or other medical interventions, affects approximately 5.7 million Americans. This project team will collaborate on home renovation plans with organizations such as home improvement retailers, nonprofits and the Duke Eye Center to help address the need for living solutions that empower individuals with low vision.

Liberata: Open-Source Academic Publishing with Incentive Structures for Peer Review and Replications

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students with experience in web development, app development or AI
Project manager opportunity available

The academic publishing system today has major incentivization problems that render it increasingly untenable for modern academic research. This project team will build a competitor to ArXiv, the most popular open source publishing system in academia. Called Liberata, this platform will use innovative incentive structures for peer review and replication.

Making Meaning at Historic Places

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students interested in public history, digital storytelling and public humanities
Project manager opportunity available (paid)

Recent trends in interpreting historic landscapes and sites have become more expansive, including actively involving community stakeholders in making meaning at these sites. This project team will examine the interrelationship between historical evidence, experience of place and social and environmental justice, examining local places such as Duke Homestead and the Catawba Trail Farm.

Meeting the Need for Reconstructive Surgery in Palestine

All current or incoming Duke graduate students may apply
Project manager opportunity available (paid)

The war in Palestine has decimated an already burdened health care system and simultaneously increased the surgical medical need. This project will create and refine an actionable needs assessment and forward-thinking blueprint for meeting the reconstructive surgery need in Palestine following the ongoing active conflict.

Multilayered Mentorship Models for STEM Equity

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students with experience in equity-focused education, curriculum design, STEM identity development and community-engaged research

The underrepresentation of women and minoritized groups in STEM fields persists despite their growing presence in the U.S. population. This project aims to foster the development of positive STEM identities through mentorship-based “counterspaces” that promote authentic communication and group collaboration.

Noninvasive Neuromodulation for Addiction

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students with background in computer science and programming/coding skills, particularly those interested in AI

Nearly 45 million U.S. adults smoke cigarettes, causing death or disability in half of this population. This project team will conduct a longitudinal intervention study of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (a non-invasive brain stimulation technique that can modulate neural activity in targeted regions) for smoking cessation in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Open-Access Portal on Chinese Law and Policy

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply
Preference for students with experience in website design, database management, and familiarity with content management systems such as WordPress or similar platforms

Despite the rising importance of Chinese law and policy research, there are information, methodological, and communications barriers to advancing the field. While the Chinese government has made primary sources more accessible, these efforts remain inefficient and lack transparency. This project team will conduct a feasibility study to explore the development, sustainability and impact of a scalable information “portal” that centralizes research findings, core terminologies and theoretical and conceptual frameworks in Chinese law and policy.

Platform Accountability in Technology Policy

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

Platform accountability refers to how digital platforms like Spotify or Facebook demonstrate responsible behavior in areas such as data privacy, cybersecurity, algorithm transparency and child protection. This project team will explore the intersection of law, policy and technology to evaluate the frameworks that governments use to measure digital platform accountability and how platforms can demonstrate responsible behavior.

Storytelling our Latinx Community and the Fandango de Durham

All current Duke undergraduate students may apply
Preference for bilingual students (English and Spanish)

Durham boasts a thriving community of Latinx artists, musicians, business owners and tradespeople. Yet, stories from the Latinx community (especially in the context of arts and culture) are overlooked. This project team seeks to document stories of the diasporic community from Veracruz, Mexico, living in Durham, North Carolina. Team members will explore stories of community members who are tradition bearers of Son Jarocho, a regional style of music and dance from southern Veracruz.

Tracing the Roots of Nutrition Access: University to the Triangle

All current Duke undergraduate students and current and incoming graduate students may apply

Food insecurity is a public health emergency in the United States due to its adverse impact on human health and well-being. Locally, one in 10 families in Durham reports skipping a meal because they did not have enough money to buy food. This project will identify community-driven, cross-sector strategies to increase food access, reduce food waste and improve food security for Triangle residents.

University-Assisted Community Schools

All current Duke undergraduate students may apply
Preference for students with interest in public school systems and community engagement

Public schools in North Carolina experience many challenges related to equitable school experiences and outcomes. Since 2019, this project team has been studying how institutions of higher education can better prepare their students for engagement with public schools. Through robust collaboration between Duke, North Carolina Central University, and Elizabeth City State University, the team will work to establish more equitable and imaginative partnerships between universities in Durham and public schools in central North Carolina. 

Learn More

Explore how project teams work.
Consult our Student FAQs.
Learn about the project team experience through stories from students.