A Legacy of Helping NC Students Grow in STEM

The Duke Research in Engineering experience for high school students to gain experience in engineering and research. This highly interactive and skill-oriented program is run by Duke BME faculty and PhD students, the latter of whom are paired with the high school students to provide detailed mentorship while researching in the Duke BME labs.

DukeREP provides STEM education and hands-on training for high school students from all backgrounds. It inspires students to pursue academic and professional careers in STEM, while giving them the support they need in academic and career development. Within the program, the students work on research projects, participate in social activities, professional skill development and college advising seminars, and learn from talks and laboratory sessions led by professors and engineering professionals.

Marc Sommer, professor of biomedical engineering, created the program in 2017 to bring the next generation of engineers into his lab while giving back to the Durham community and helping young minds grow their expertise. Thus, DukeREP places a heavy focus on recruiting students from Durham public schools and charter schools. Funded by Duke Engineering, Duke’s Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, this program is an immersive view into the possibilities of research. Sommer has acted as faculty advisor up until this coming summer, when Emma Chory, assistant professor of BME, will take over.

Students involved in the program have expressed a strong enthusiasm for DukeREP. One example comes from Mahika Bansal, now a senior at the University of California – Berkeley, who said, “The program solidified my understanding about engineering and prepared me for the reality of college.”

Bansal is studying biomedical engineering and data science, with plans to work in life science consulting after graduating this spring. She participated in the 2021 DukeREP program that occurred on Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and she remembers working with a mobile spectroscopy device at the dinner table. Nevertheless, she stated that DukeREP allowed her to truly understand concrete aspects of biomedical engineering within the program.

“The DukeREP program taught me to persevere and finish my project. It also taught me how to ask for help and ask the right questions,” Bansal said.

Through a diverse range of activities and mentorship connections, DukeREP develops critical skills and experiences that prepare students for college. According to a study conducted through qualitative analysis of post-program impacts, 88% of DukeREP alumni currently attend a university school program (86% of whom are pursuing STEM degrees), and the remaining 12% hold full-time positions in the workforce. This aspect of the program is especially important due to the high prioritization of local students in North Carolina who come from underserved communities. DukeREP seeks to help in bridging opportunity gaps and provide students with the network, skills and mentorship they need to pursue pathways into higher education, especially engineering academia.

Another DukeREP alumnus, Arnav Nanda, said that the program gave him a “foot in the door” to research and brought him to Duke University, where he is currently a junior pursuing electrical and computer engineering and computer science. Born and raised in North Carolina, Nanda continued his research directly after the program with an internship in a Duke BME lab studying X-ray diffraction for brain cancer. In DukeREP, he focused his final project on induced pluripotent stem cells for progeria and organ chip development. Several years later, he continued this topic of research, recently leading the design of an in-home microfluidic chip that can culture cells and grab relevant data to identify if the cell is cancerous. While Nanda recently switched his research to quantum-computing-focused electrical engineering research, he emphasized that DukeREP had a significant impact in building the connections and foundation of practical research skills that he uses today.

Students from DukeREP build cohesive cohorts with other students, both within the program and in other Duke summer programs running in parallel. This mingling is often facilitated by in-person social events during the summer with groups like the Duke University Neuroscience Experience and Cell Biology Academy, which helps the students expand their networks. These connections also support the students throughout the years ahead, especially with college applications and gaining research experience as undergrads. Both Nanda and Bansal said that they have made friends through the program that remain today, supporting each other through their research endeavors.

DukeREP can create these experiences thanks to the administration and team behind it. Sommer and Chory work with a group of PhD engineering students, who volunteer to run the research mentorship program. The current graduate directors are Lailah Ligons and Parker Esswein. Esswein said, “The graduate students can learn and develop their expertise along with the high school students through the experience of mentoring and helping introduce research.”

The DukeREP program also recently extended to a year-long mentorship program called Duke Journey in Engineering Mentoring (DukeJEM). This program allows DukeREP students to work one-on-one with a graduate mentor to support ongoing research beyond the summer, as well as help with college applications. This year-long timeline allows mentors and mentees to build a strong relationship that can go beyond the relationships made in the initial summer program.

After being a mentor in both DukeGEM and DukeJEM, Esswein said that he was able to create a close relationship with the mentee and help the student continue his research and college admissions. “It was very rewarding to see his gears turning and witness his growth as a researcher,” Esswein said. For the past few years, DukeREP mentors have also been supplemented with a leadership in engineering class taught by Cameron Kim, assistant professor of the practice of BME, to help foster a more fruitful mentorship experience.

This program, called the Duke Journey in Engineering Mentorship (DukeJEM) program, has BME undergraduate and graduate student mentors jointly meet with DukeREP high school student alumni throughout the academic year to provide academic and professional guidance, including college application assistance, and prepare them for a STEM education and career. This year-long timeline allows mentors and mentees to build a strong relationship that can go beyond the relationships made in the initial summer program.

DukeREP is unique in its commitment to giving back to the community, as students attend for free and receive a stipend for the duration of the program. It actively works to improve and broaden its reach as the program grows each year in facilitating local and national STEM engagement. The program incorporates feedback from participants in fields of mentorship, scientific and technical expertise, career exploration, and college preparedness to bring new elements to the program each year. As university admissions become more competitive, practical experience in research has become a fundamental component of a competitive college application. For students looking to pursue research or biomedical engineering in higher education, DukeREP is, according to Nanda, “the best way to do it.”

The contributions of DukeREP were recently recognized anew by the Burroughs Welcome Fund, which followed up its previous support from 2022-2025 with a new grant to help fund the program through 2028. “We are very grateful for this external award,” said Sommer. “I think it highlights the growth of DukeREP and the impact it has had, both on teaching PhD students to be effective mentors and inspiring the next generation of engineers from the local high school communities.”

Amare Swierc is a junior studying international comparative studies.