New Hubs Represent “Big Bets” on Interdisciplinarity at Duke

The Office of the Provost has chosen three faculty-led projects to receive Multiyear Interdisciplinary Hubs grants for research, education and engagement.

The grants will galvanize emerging intellectual connections, research collaborations and links to external partners, as well as create compelling pathways of inquiry for students at all levels.

“Duke has a history of supporting exciting faculty collaborations at different stages of their development through seed grants,” said Provost Alec D. Gallimore. “These Interdisciplinary Hubs are an important new mechanism for enabling exceptionally promising projects to take the next leap forward and a key strategic investment at an uncertain time for research funding.”

The selected projects will receive three years of support along with project management effort from the Office of Research & Innovation’s Research Project Management Core.

Multiyear Interdisciplinary Hubs

Duke Critical Minerals Hub

Leads: Leanne Gilbertson, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Avner Vengosh, Nicholas Distinguished Professor of Environmental Quality

Core Members: Heileen Hsu-Kim, Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Erika Weinthal, John O. Blackburn Distinguished Professor of Environmental Sciences and Policy; Sharlini Sankaran, Director of External Partnerships; Ginger Sigmon, Nicholas Director of Research Development and Administration

Host: Pratt School of Engineering

Critical minerals are vital to advances in the global and domestic economies, the energy transition, and national security. This hub brings together experts from engineering and the natural and social sciences to establish an interdisciplinary platform for research and education of critical minerals. These experts will work on different angles of critical minerals and examine their full life cycle — from extraction and mining to processing, use and reuse — to develop a framework for managing demand and supply in the short term and reducing critical minerals dependence over the long term. A key element of the group’s work will be developing partnerships with industry as well as local communities impacted by mineral extraction processes. Other focal points include strategies to strengthen domestic supply chains, techniques to recover minerals from unconventional sources, development of environmental and geochemical methods to ensure the sustainability of critical mining exploration, and innovations that support the development of alternative materials.

This project previously received an Intellectual Community Planning Grant from the Office of the Provost. Learn how faculty members leveraged this seed funding to move forward.

Interdisciplinary Hub for Rural Health Equity

Leads: Devon Noonan, Associate Professor in the School of Nursing; Jessilyn Dunn, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Jessica Sperling, Assistant Professor of Medicine; Wylin Wilson, Associate Professor of Theological Ethics

Host: School of Nursing

Through community-based action, this hub aims to tackle critical health disparities in rural North Carolina, where residents face higher rates of chronic health conditions and have limited access to care due to economic, social and geographic barriers. Experts from a wide array of fields including nursing, engineering, divinity and the social sciences will expand community partnerships and co-create research to better support rural North Carolinians. The main objectives are to equip students, trainees and faculty to address rural health issues; build infrastructure to support community-led health innovations; and advance those innovations to reduce health inequities. The initial focus will be on chronic health conditions, laying the groundwork to support broader issues including climate, AI equity and food insecurity.

Observational Research Building Interdisciplinary Therapeutic Advances (ORBIT)

Lead: Brian Mac Grory, Associate Professor of Neurology

Core Members: Fan Li, Professor of Statistical Science; Laine Thomas, Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics; Ryan McDevitt, Professor of Business Administration; Anqi Zhao, Assistant Professor of Business Administration; Emily O’Brien, Associate Professor of Population Health Sciences; Ricardo Henao, Associate Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics

Host: Duke Clinical Research Institute

There is an unmet need for more efficient approaches to medical evidence generation that can inform physicians, policymakers, business and the public. This hub brings together investigators with complementary skills in AI, economics, statistics, data science, population health and clinical medicine to leverage real-world data to tackle this issue. ORBIT focuses on two main objectives: developing techniques and tools to use real-world data to answer questions that would otherwise require a randomized, controlled, clinical trial; and making randomized, controlled trials more efficient by using real-world, observational data overlaid with techniques in AI and data science.

About the Selection Process

In October 2024, the Office of the Provost invited Duke faculty to submit letters of intent for term-limited interdisciplinary hubs. The 68 submissions represented hundreds of faculty members from all of Duke’s schools. Each letter was reviewed by multiple internal reviewers and 13 teams were invited to submit full proposals, which were assessed by a mix of internal and external reviewers. Five teams were interviewed as finalists, with three teams selected for financial support. The expectation is that after three years, these hubs will be sustained through external resources or have an “off-ramp” strategy.

“This competition brought forth an extraordinarily rich set of ideas from Duke’s faculty, reflecting their interdisciplinary creativity and capacity to connect compelling areas of research to both educational innovation and robust community partnerships,” said Edward Balleisen, vice provost for interdisciplinary studies, whose office managed the selection process. “We look forward to supporting these hubs and continuing to refine how we support interdisciplinary teams at all stages of development.”