Dr. Linda Franzoni

Mechanical engineers design machines that will help humans.  In some cases, these machines do things that are dangerous for humans, or impossible for humans to do (like explore outer space, or pick up an object at the bottom of the ocean), or just tedious for humans (like putting caps on bottles). Machines that mechanical engineers design are made of many components including gears, bearings, nuts and bolts, etc.  Many machines also include linkages, or groups of linkages called mechanisms.   

Professor Franzoni’s FEMMES workshop looks at mechanical objects called mechanisms that make up the components of machines.  Participants will categorize simple mechanisms, will learn about pivots, linkages, sliders, effort, load, fulcrum, and will design a simple mechanism out of cardboard. Students will also learn about linkages and create their own simple mechanisms to perform two basic tasks.  They will also develop ideas about input, output, motion and force. They will sort some common mechanisms like scissors, tweezers, salad tongs, staple removers, ice cream scoopers, etc. into different classes and explore the concept of mechanical advantage.

Professor Linda Franzoni received her undergraduate degree from Yale University in 1980, where she majored in Engineering and Applied Science with a specialization in Mechanical Engineering.  She received her Masters and Doctoral degrees from Duke University in Mechanical Engineering in 1988 and 1991 respectively.  In the years in between her bachelors degree and pursuing her graduate degrees, Professor Franzoni worked for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.  Her job consisted of analyzing the structural dynamics of a spacecraft which was being designed to explore Jupiter.  The questions that Professor Franzoni needed to address were things like:  will the camera fall off on lift-off?  will the antenna supports be strong enough or will they break?  how far will certain parts move during lift-off?  will they bump into each other?  In graduate school, and in her subsequent research as a faculty member, Professor Franzoni studies sound waves and noise that comes from vibrating objects like the walls of an airplane. Professor Franzoni teaches courses on Mechanical Design, where students build machines to do certain tasks.

Dr. Claudia Gunsch

Have you ever gotten sick and wondered why? Was it from that drinking water fountain? Did you eat fruit without washing it? Did you eat meat that was not fully cooked? Did you forget to wash your hands? Did someone cough at the movie theater and not cover their mouth? An important component of environmental engineering consists of minimizing human exposure to pathogens present in air and water.  Environmental engineers develop treatment technologies to remove pathogens from these streams to protect human health.  In the context of this activity, you will learn how to identify pathogens using genetics. You will be given a DNA probe for a specific microbe and will learn how to use it as a sensor for pathogen identification.  You will learn about various types of pathogens and find out how they infect humans.  You will also learn strategies for minimizing your exposure to pathogens and stay as healthy as possible!

Dr. Claudia Gunsch is trained as an environmental engineer and a molecular biotechnologist. Her research is focused on understanding how pollutants affect microbial populations in natural and engineered environments.

Dr. Glenda Kelly and Dr. Steve Feller

Can you really make music from motion?  Come see how and learn how to use software to do it yourself.  Participants will experiment and interact with the sound exhibit in the Duke Sound Studio in CIEMAS to understand processes involved in transforming motion into music. Graphical displays around the perimeter will depict the process of converting video (from web-enabled cameras mounted around the room) into sound.  Participants will experiment with the sound generation processes and use what they learn to construct their own sound mappings of events in the space.  

Steve Feller is a Research Associate in the Department of Electrical and Computer  
Engineering at Duke University where he splits time between the Duke Imaging and Spectroscopy Project and the Visualization Technology Group. Mr. Feller has worked on a wide range of projects ranging from developing new scientific instruments to public dance performances. Current projects include serving as the technical lead in developing an interactive museum installation, maintaining the Duke Immersive Visualization Environment, and developing hardware for medical applications. 

Glenda Kelly is a psychologist and a Research Scientist with the Visualization Technology Group in the Pratt School of Engineering. She completed her PhD at Duke.  Her research interests include developing educational programs that utilize visualization as a significant learning component and assessing impacts of visualization technology in various cognitive applications. She is also committed to developing ways to interest and engage diverse populations in K-12 science and engineering.

Steve and Glenda are collaborating with the staff at the N.C. Museum of Life and Science to install DynaMix into the museum and create an exciting interactive exhibit for the children and youth who will visit it this Spring. 

Dr. Anne West

Dr. Anne West is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurobiology, where her lab studies both the mechanisms and consequences of regulated gene expression in the nervous system. The idea behind this research is simpler than it might sound. Every day we encounter things in our world that we remember. Those things (a stop sign, a song on the radio, the smell of chocolate chip cookies) emit signals (light, sound, smell) that impinge on and activate our senses (your eyes, ears, and nose). Your brain “knows” what these senses are experiencing because cells called neurons act like telephone wires to transmit the wonderful sights, sounds and smells of the world into your brain in the form of electrical impulses. But the brain is not a passive receiver of this information - in fact it physically and functionally reorganizes itself on the basis of this information to best receive that which is most useful. This is the process of remembering, and part of the mechanical basis of this process is the synthesis of new parts in the brain (new expression of genes read off the DNA blueprint within cells) that makes this reorganization possible.

Dr. Allison Hill

Have you ever wondered why is it that our world has such a wonderful and varied mix of people, animals, and plants? Why is it that members of one family may all look very similar to one another or very different? How do we explain that approximately half of new born babies are boys and half are girls? How is it that in one litter of puppies there might be an array of brown, white and black fur? The answers to these questions start with an understanding of genes and how genetic traits are inherited from parents to offspring.

In this workshop, the participants will study the patterns of inheritance of multiple genes by constructing a family of imaginary creatures. This activity will demonstrate that by knowing the genotype of parents, it is possible to use basic rules of probability to predict the frequency with which specific traits wlil appear in their offspring. The appearance of each imaginary creature that is produced during this workshop will reflect the genes it has inherited from its parents. We will see if we can predict, in advance, the frequency with which the different traits will appear in the family.

Dr. Nina Sherwood

"The Fly and I - How Flies can teach us about Ourselves"

How similar do you think you are to those little flies you see buzzing around your fruit? Do they have a brain? Feelings? Do they sleep? Groom? Fight? Get sick? In this workshop we will learn how the tiny fruit fly can teach us about how our own bodies work. We will look at a variety of flies, observing their physical traits using the microscope and a few of their behaviors, and then identify mutants in these traits or behaviors from a set of "mystery" flies. You'll be amazed by what can happen when a single gene - one that you may have too - has a mistake in it!

Nina Sherwood is interested in understanding how the nervous system works, and thinks that fruit flies are a great way to address this and many other questions about biology. Her lab studies why certain genes, found in humans as well as flies, are necessary for nerves to function. She is an assistant research professor in the Biology department and scholar in the Institute of Genome Sciences and Policy at Duke.

Dr. Helen Hsu-Kim -- FEMMES Faculty Advisor

"Tales of H2O: From Flocs to Filters"

Where does our tap water come from? How does it get cleaned? Our drinking water comes from local streams, lakes, and underground water wells. But before the water makes it way to our faucets, environmental engineers first treat and purify the water to make it safe for people to drink. In this workshop, we will learn water treatment and filtration methods used by our drinking water treatment facilities. We will test different filter designs and observe which design is the most successful.

Dr. Hsu-Kim is an environmental engineer who studies pollutants in the aquatic environment. Her research activities are focused on mercury, a pollutant metal that contaminates our waterways and eventually bioaccumulates in the food web. Her webpage is available at . 

Dr. Heather Stapleton

Why can we get water from a well built into the ground? When rain water seeps into the ground, it is stored in underground aquifers. These aquifers are a source of drinking water for many communities in North Carolina. In this workshop, FEMMES participants will build a model aquifer and discover how water is stored underground. We will discuss how aquifers represent a part of the water cycle. Participants will experiment with the model aquifer and observe how human activities can pollute it. 
Dr. Stapleton is an environmental chemist who is interested in the behavior and transport of organic pollutants in the environment.  Her current research is focused on the transformation and fate of brominated flame retardant chemicals in indoor and aquatic environments. Specifically, her research lab is studying how sunlight exposure degrades these chemicals and she is also exploring how fish accumulate and metabolize these chemicals.

Dr. J.A. Gimm

What happens to magnetic particles when you make them very very small?  What if a piece metal can “remember” its shape?  What is actually happening to atoms on the surface when you make a dent?  What makes a rubber ball bounce?  We will demonstrate some of the coolest advanced materials and make funny-shaped rubbers balls that glow in the dark.

Professor Gimm is a biomedical engineer.  She teaches biomaterials (how materials interact with the body and what properties make some materials better than others), energetics and kinetics of biological systems (how much energy can we get out from what we eat and how quickly), and engineering design (how can we build something to solve a specific engineering problem).  She is also interested in learning about how materials properties change when we make things very very small.

Dr. Rochelle D. Schwartz-Bloom

The project for FEMMES participants will focus on the role of plants in providing drugs used as medicines. We will discuss the origin of aspirin from the willow tree, and its cousin, salicylate, which is found in numerous plants. Salicylate has been added to a number of household products, including shampoo and chewing gum. The FEMMES participants will perform experiments to determine if certain plants and products contain this drug. They will learn why the drug is found normally in plants and why it is added to products that society uses. They will also learn how it works.

As a pharmacologist, Dr. Schwartz-Bloom studies how drugs cure diseases, or cause trouble. Her expertise is in neuropharmacology, or how drugs affect the brain. Dr. Schwartz-Bloom’s research focuses on how to prevent cell death in the brain with drugs. Her most recent research is in the area of science education, and she has developed several science curricula at the K-12 level. Dr. Schwartz-Bloom is director of RISE at Duke (Raising Interest in Science Education).

Dr. Susan Rodger

Participants will learn the basics of computer science programming by creating a 3D virtual world. Using the programming environment Alice on a laptop, they will first select 3D objects from a library. They will then learn how to select commands to make the objects move, talk and interact, and how to create events and event handlers (when the key 'b' is pressed, a bee turns around and buzzes). Participants will then learn how to combine these to write a short interactive story.

Susan Rodger is an associate professor of the practice in the Computer Science Department at Duke University. She completed her PhD in Computer Science at Purdue University. Her research interest include creating interactive and visual software for teaching computer science.

Dr. Katherine J. Franz

The oxygen you breathe can naturally lead to by-products like hydrogen peroxide that are damaging to your cells. Luckily, an iron-containing enzyme called catalase protects you. It speeds the conversion of hydrogen peroxide to oxygen and water. In this workshop we'll see how fast the catalase enzyme works and investigate the effects of some variables like enzyme concentration and temperature on its activity.

Dr. Kathy Franz is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry.  As a bioinorganic chemist, she is interested in the roles that metal ions like iron and copper play in living things.  

The Society for Women Engineers (SWE)

"Marshmallow Madness Design Challenge"

Using marshmallows and toothpicks, FEMMES participants will explore the field of architectural engineering. The focus will be on strength and height of structures, and participants will be introduced to various geometries that serve as architectural strengthening techniques. The objective is to develop a simple understanding of optimization of both height and strength. Points will be awarded for each component, and prizes will be given to high-scorers.

"Physics Fun"

Do you want to see a fresh banana shatter into pieces? Do you want to know how to make yourself spin in circles just by holding a bicycle wheel? If the answer is “yes,” then come to the physics demonstration table to watch (and perform!) fun experiments involving liquid nitrogen and rotating pedestals. Through these activities, you will learn about physics topics such as angular momentum and the states of matter.

"Goo Chemistry"

Why does the goo behave like, well, goo? Why doesn’t it dissolve in water, but then spread out and act like water? How can goo act like a solid and a liquid? In this experiment, you get to find out exactly what goes into our special goo (by making it yourselves!) and how it works, with a little chemistry (the fun chemistry…we promise!)

The Society for Women Engineers (SWE), founded in 1950, is a not-for-profit educational and service organization promoting engineering as a highly desirable career aspiration for women.

Dr. Susan Alberts -- FEMMES Keynote Speaker

Dr. Susan Alberts received her bachelor's degree from Reed College, her Master's from UCLA, and her Ph.D. from University of Chicago. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology, specializing in the behavior and ecology of large mammals. She studies baboons and African elephants in the Amboseli basin, at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Southern Kenya. She has two daughters, Teresa aged 4 years and Michele aged 10 years, who have accompanied her to the field in Kenya since they were infants.

Dr. Gary Ybarra -- FEMMES Faculty Advisor

Gary A. Ybarra, Ph.D. is a Professor of the Practice and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke. He is the principal investigator of several K-12 engineering outreach programs as part of his Engineering K-PhD program at Duke. He received a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from North Carolina State University in 1992 and has been on the faculty in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University since 1993. In addition to his K-12 outreach work, his research interests include microwave imaging and electrical impedance tomography.