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.

A recurring theme in my global health and public policy studies has been the difficulty of translations between research, policy and implementation. The work of this Bass Connections team has made me hopeful about the potential for interdisciplinary collaboration to address complex healthcare delivery problems.

My passion and commitment to this team extends far beyond our team meetings and the Duke University academic year. My involvement with Bass Connections has inspired me to pursue my interests in child and family policy, health policy and educational policy alongside an MD degree.

I take so much pride in my team. The partnership between the universities is one of the best things about the project because I get to interact with students from a different university and get different perspectives.

The longevity of my involvement in this project is part of what has made it so rewarding. Each year on the team has brought something entirely new.

We created a framework for an effective message as being one that was enthusiastic but primarily information-centered, conceptualizing non-voting behavior as being more due to structural barriers than apathy. We then tried to produce media that would bring that concept to life. 

This experience has allowed me to focus my research interests for the future, dealing with how to assess and manage physical injuries, such as a concussion or head injury.