The work we did was at times challenging and confusing, but overall important in creating space for experimental projects that do not fit cleanly into a single department.

The program offered me valuable opportunities to interact with faculty that were outside my discipline, but with whom I shared a common commitment to solving a pressing world problem.

Bass Connections reminded me why I wanted to be an engineer in the first place and allowed me to be creative in my design work. It made me seek out more projects like it where sweat equity was appreciated and valued.  

The team’s diversity was the most rewarding aspect of the year-long project. I learned significantly more from interactions with fellow team members than from working independently on assignments and general research.

We have approached this work from a community-based perspective, meaning that the questions are developed in collaboration with our community partners to help improve the programs that we’re looking at and provide feedback to them.

My time with this team was spent building meaningful relationships and developing a strong foundation in social justice, history and research methods. This team pushed me to work relentlessly as a critical thinker and advocate.

The overall flexibility and diversity of ideas in [my Bass Connections] project have allowed me to delve into these various fields and find the topics that excite me the most while working towards an end product with real-world implications.

My experience on this team helped me adopt a more comprehensive view of medicine and convinced me that doctors have the ability (and moreover the responsibility) to focus on not only a patient’s physical ailments, but also their personal preferences for care and overall psychosocial well-being.

I have already learned a great deal about the process for obtaining regulatory approval for medical devices. My teammates and I have begun to rigorously document the assembly and testing of the prototype in preparation for submission to the FDA.

My time on the team has had a huge impact on my future plans to work in health and medicine. My interest in health communication has also grown, and this next year I hope to integrate my skills in videography and photography along with my background in science to share valuable messages and communicate science information effectively.

This experience truly opened my eyes to the breadth of experimentation that occurs in research outside of a laboratory setting.

With this team, I’m the first person to design the technology on the ground floor. Eventually, people with neurodegenerative conditions can use this therapy to improve their quality of life.

Digital health communities make a huge difference in community members’ disease outcomes. Hopefully as a future physician, I’m able to give suggestions to patients about what communities exist out there.

This project combined many of the fields I am interested in: mechanical engineering, energy and the environment, and innovation and entrepreneurship. This was also my first time working on a mechanical engineering project from concept to implementation, so it was a great learning process.

I learned about writing’s beneficial effects on patients and healthcare providers and its usefulness as a part of the practice of personal wellness. As an aspiring physician, I hope to continue writing in the future as a means of centering and reflection.

Conducting team-based environment research through my computer science background has helped me think about different career options. I gained technical and soft skills, networked with industry professionals and gained insight on my professional future.

By participating in Bass Connections, I was able to work not only with people in my doctoral energy team, but with undergrads, master’s students and postdocs. Many of my most fruitful experiences at Duke have been working with them.

As a member of a Bass Connections team, I was able to get more invested in research, propelling me to complete a senior thesis project and search for ways to continue building research skills before applying to graduate schools.

I had no idea what to expect for my first year of college, with COVID impacting what I believed college classes, academic research and a general college atmosphere was supposed to look like. My Bass Connections project team has been the most personally impactful and academically stimulating experience of my time so far, and I will continue to remember the work and collaboration our team has done for the rest of my life.