Ten New Faculty Collaborations Receive Intellectual Community Planning Grants

The Office of the Provost has awarded Intellectual Community Planning Grants to ten projects from Duke faculty members based in eight schools, along with faculty colleagues at UNC-Chapel Hill, NC Central and NC State.

These planning grants will be used to cover the cost of meeting venues, external speakers, event materials, books or other meeting costs, and/or exploratory research into potential collaborators.

Seed funding supports Duke’s strategic vision of empowering the boldest thinkers to take on pressing challenges and bring novel approaches to problem-solving.

2026-27 Intellectual Community Planning Grants

Developing a Jazz-Shaped Pedagogy for Professional Education and Formation

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Lead: Patrick T. Smith, Associate Research Professor of Theological Ethics & Bioethics

Core Members: Stephanie Gedzyk-Nieman, Associate Clinical Professor in the School of Nursing; H. Timothy Lovelace, Jr., Professor of Law; Jacquelyn McMillian-Bohler, Associate Clinical Professor in the School of Nursing 

This project convenes Duke faculty across professional schools to develop a shared intellectual agenda that draws on jazz, understood as a living framework beyond music, to reimagine professional formation and inform future curricular and institutional initiatives.

Enhancing the Collective Impact of Latino Health Equity Research at Duke

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Lead: Allison Stafford, Associate Professor in the School of Nursing

Core Members: Rosa Gonzalez-Guarda, Professor in the School of Nursing; Matthew Sinclair, Assistant Professor of Medicine; Maria Marquine, Associate Professor of Medicine; Lisa Satterwhite, Associate Research Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering

This project strengthens and expands El Colectivo, an interdisciplinary community of practice dedicated to Latino health equity, by fostering collaborative scholarship and providing professional development.

Exploring Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR) Research and Policy at Duke

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Lead: Nicolas Cassar, Lee Hill Snowdon Professor of Biogeochemistry

Core Members: Laura Dalton, Assistant Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering; Celina Scott-Buechler, Accenture Assistant Professor of Public Policy; John Virdin, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Marine Science & Conservation; Tyler Felgenhauer, Senior Research Scientist, Civil & Environmental Engineering; Ginger Sigmon, Nicholas Director of Research Development and Administration; Richard Mei, Professor of the Practice of Natural Resource Finance

This project will lay the groundwork for sustained leadership in mCDR, advancing both fundamental knowledge and actionable solutions to support global climate goals.

Faculty 3-in-1 Teaming Pilots: 3 Working Subcommittees and 1 Working Cohort

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Lead: Rebecca Simmons, Professor of the Practice of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science

Core Members: Catherine Admay, Senior Lecturer in the Sanford School of Public Policy; Thomas Newpher, Associate Professor of the Practice of Psychology & Neuroscience; Alexandra Zagbayou, Hart Associate Professor of the Practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy; Marta McCabe, Global Learning Consultant, Academic Resource Center; Aaron Kyle, Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering

This project advances a year of collaborative work and builds on existing Duke efforts in fostering student teamwork, deepening connections across programs, and moving promising ideas into a more coordinated phase of piloting, study and shared implementation.

Generative Modeling and Sampling: An Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Mathematics and Statistics

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Lead: Xiuyuan Cheng, Professor of Mathematics

Core Members: Jianfeng Lu, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Mathematics; Galen Reeves, Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Statistical Science; Sifan Liu, Assistant Professor of Statistical Science

This project will build a new interdisciplinary faculty community at Duke spanning mathematics and statistics and focused on new sampling methodologies inspired by modern generative models.

Humanization and Healthcare: Employing AI and Interdisciplinary Methods to Address Stigma in the Healthcare System

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Lead: Lawrence Yang, Pauline Gratz Distinguished Professor at the School of Nursing

Core Members: Sharron Docherty, Professor in the School of Nursing; David Page, Duke Health Distinguished Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics; Richard So, Michael G. Rhodes and Maureen C. Rhodes Associate Professor in the Digital Humanities; Bhuwan Dhingra, Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Drawing from AI and machine learning, nursing, stigma science, population health, the social sciences and the humanities, this group wishes to explore how “humanization,” or the recognition and treatment of all people as full human beings, be meaningfully restored to healthcare systems, healthcare professionals and the patients they serve.

Interregional Solidarities: Approaches to Social Justice on College Campuses

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Lead: Erdag Göknar, Associate Professor of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies

Core Members: Jessica Namakkal, Associate Professor of the Practice of International Comparative Studies; Preeti Singh, Assistant Professor of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies; Didem Havlioglu, Associate Professor of the Practice of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies

This project brings together interdisciplinary faculty, students and community partners to examine how communities of students, staff and faculty engage with issues around social justice.

Medieval and Early Modern Working Group

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Lead: Clare Woods, Associate Professor of Classical Studies

Core Members: Jehangir Malegam, Associate Professor of History; Kate Driscoll, Assistant Professor of Romance Studies

This project aims to build community and foster new collaborations in teaching and research through opportunities to share in-progress work, and to connect outside the members’ individual disciplines.

Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS) Wargame Exercise

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Lead: Kyle Beardsley, Professor of Political Science

Core Members: Erinn Whitaker, Professor of the Practice in the Curriculum of Peace, War and Defense, UNC-Chapel Hill; Rakesh Malhotra, Associate Professor of Environmental, Earth and Geospatial Sciences, NC Central University; William Boettcher, Associate Professor, School of Public and International Affairs, NC State University; Jennifer Siegel, Bruce R. Kuniholm Distinguished Professor of History and Public Policy

Participating faculty will be coparticipants, along with 60 area students, in an immersive scenario-based exercise involving plausible geopolitical conflict; they will also consider how the exercise helps students understand current security challenges.

Voice/Noise: The Ethical Lives of Sound

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Lead: Yun Emily Wang, Assistant Professor of Music

Core Members: Louise Meintjes, Marcello Lotti Professor of Music and Cultural Anthropology; Andrea Bohlman, Associate Professor of Music, UNC-Chapel Hill; Michael Figueroa, Associate Professor of Music, UNC-Chapel Hill; Yurika Tamura, Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, UNC-Chapel Hill

Voice/Noise is a community of scholars who think with sound, music and listening as situated forms of critical discourse; the project will convene five gatherings throughout the academic year to delve into the ethics of voice, noise, sound and listening.

Main image, first row: project leads Patrick T. Smith, Allison Stafford, Nicolas Cassar, Rebecca Simmons, Xiuyuan Cheng; second row: Lawrence Yang, Erdag Goknar, Clare Woods, Kyle Beardsley, Yun Emily Wang