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“Plus” Programs Add Up to Research-Intensive Summer

This summer, 270 undergraduate and graduate students took part in team-based research projects through Data+, History+ and seven other “plus” programs, working alongside other teams on campus.

Pie chart showing number of students per program: Data+ 78; Code+ 61; CS+ 18; Climate+ 28; Doc+ 14, History+ 18, Math+ 23; Applied Ethics+ 20; Arts+ 9. — 270 students took part in 9 “plus” programs during Summer 2025.

“What we asked students to do in these ten weeks is pretty different from what we ask them to do in the classroom,” said James Chappel, Gilhuly Family Associate Professor of History. “It has involved a lot more working together in a team with a client. Unlike professors, clients don’t always have a super clear idea of what they want, and the students and clients have to figure it out together.”

Teams dug into some of the most pressing issues of our time, from rising seas, ethically responsible AI and North Carolina educational trajectories to food access, polarized public opinion and housing insecurity.

Students worked in a communal environment, gathering frequently with other teams for workshops, meals, problem-solving and social outings.

2025 Plus Programs at a Glance

Applied Ethics+

Led by Duke Science & Society

Undergraduate and graduate students work with host organizations to tackle challenges in policy, technology, research and ethics, and gain valuable leadership skills.

Duke students in the Applied Ethics+ program give a presentation. — “I have a strong interest in the intersection of technology, ethics and law. I was hoping to get some experience under my belt, but it has been much more than that … being able to take what I’ve worked on in a classroom and bring it into something that is really changing the lives of many North Carolinians around the state is more than I could have asked for.” –Viveka Mehrotra (at right), AI Integration in North Carolina State Government: Policy Best Practices and Implementation Roadmap

Watch this video from Science & Society.

Arts+

Led by Duke Arts

Undergraduates focus on arts administration and the creative processes behind artistic products and produce outcomes such as season launches and series curation.

Arts+ students pose with their whale sculpture. — “As three STEM majors, we’ve loved working at the intersection of science, art and community through this project. In the process of building this whale and sharing it with the public, we found that the art and stories built around it help make the science more accessible.” –Ally Doss, Jocelyn Morgenstein and Naflah Mohammed, Resilience Through Puppetry

Watch this video from Duke Arts and check out these stories:

Climate+

Led by the Rhodes Information Initiative at Duke in partnership with the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability

Undergraduate and master’s students enhance their understanding of climate change and identify sustainable solutions using data science tools.

Two Duke students stand next to their Climate+ research poster. — “This Climate+ project stood out to me because I’m into oceans. Coastal areas are the most vulnerable to climate change. There’s a lot of data out there but it’s spread out and hard to read.” –Ethan Cho (left, with Leonard Eshun), Mapping High Stakes Coastal Zones: An Interactive Dashboard for Improved Decision-Making

Learn about this summer’s Climate+ projects.

Code+

Led by the Office of Information Technology

Undergraduates develop software products or solutions guided by IT professionals.

Three Duke students show off their Code+ poster. — “We’re an experimental group,” said Alexander Valdovinos (right, with Jason Nguyen and Dia Shah). “We learned how to use lots of tools.” For their project, AI-Powered Tools for Front-End Development, they created a tool to present existing websites differently based on the user’s context.

Learn more about this summer’s Code+ projects.

CS+

Led by the Department of Computer Science

Undergraduates focus on projects in computer science research and applications.

Amanda Guo and Neha Jatla stand by their poster. — For their project LLM-Powered Querying and Visualization of Electronic Health Records, Amanda Guo and Neha Jatla built an AI tool that makes data analysis of health records easier for non-coders.

Read about this summer’s CS+ projects.

Data+

Led by the Rhodes Information Initiative at Duke

Undergraduates and master’s students learn how to analyze, visualize and interpret data to solve real-world challenges, while gaining broad exposure to the field of data science.

A Duke student presents his research poster for the Data+ program. — “Our team got to pick things we were interested in with a Sanford dataset containing four cohorts of high school students all over North Carolina public and charter schools. We had longitudinal student data so we could track the same students over several years. My research question was, How did Covid-19 affect students’ GPA and standardized test trajectories? I gained a lot of technical skills and did time-consuming data cleaning, which was worth it.” –Adam Cartwright, Educational Trajectories in North Carolina

Read about other Data+ projects:

Doc+

Led by the Duke Center for Documentary Studies

Undergraduate students explore diverse documentary mediums like photography, film, audio and oral history while working under the mentorship of a creative project partner.

Doc+ students gather on the front porch at the Center for Documentary Studies. — “This program really showed me for the first time that I don’t think there’s a more compelling candidate for the meaning of life than finding and telling people’s stories … I now know that’s what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.” –Trevor Darr (at far right), Student Action with Farmworkers (Photo: Harlan Campbell)

Read about the projects in Doc+: A Summer of Documentary Immersion at Duke.

History+

Led by the Department of History

Undergraduates engage in a variety of historical research projects with community partners and produce outputs such as museum exhibits or oral histories.