Summer enrichment seminar

Three undergrad Unis recently presented on their cool summer enrichment experiences: Bora Kang, Chisom Amalunweze, and Paul Wright. I’ll summarize some of the high points of their summers.

1. Bora Kang spent the summer in Adelaide, Australia doing wine research at the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI). In case you don’t know Adelaide is on the south coast of Australia in the state of South Australia. It’s a center of the Australia wine industry. Bora became interested in food science last year and considered a number of possibilities for summer research, but eventually settled on wine science because wine is complex and interesting, with many low-concentration chemicals in wine that are important in determining the flavor. She showed us a slide with a partial chemical profile of wine. There were a lot of chemicals on that list! Most of them exist at very low concentrations (e.g. 1 microgram/Liter), yet some have such strong flavors that they can still be tasted. AWRI has active research programs in a number of areas including bottling, flavor, and pesticides. Bora commented that the enthusiasm for wine research of everyone at the institute was evident. Bora’s project focused on smoke taint, which occurs when residues from wildfires come into contact with the grapes. Smoke taint ruins the flavor of wine. A number of compounds have been identified in smoke tainted wine that are possible culprits for the bad taste. Bora worked on synthesizing some of these chemicals so that the researchers at AWRI would have them at high enough concentrations to work with them in the laboratory. Bora found the work at AWRI very interesting because she was able to apply her synthetic chemistry skills to a real-world problem, and she felt that the work at AWRI is a good example of research at the interface of basic science with winemaking, a very traditional art.
2. Chisom Amalunweze went to Tanzania in connection with the Pratt school’s DukeEngage program. Tanzania is located in East Africa. In addition to a long coastline, it also has some amazing natural wonders, including Mount Kilimanjaro and Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa and a source of the Nile. This is just beyond cool for an outdoors lover like me. Definitely on my bucket list to visit! Chisom worked in conjunction with Engineering World Health. Her work involved traveling to hospitals to fix broken down medical equipment. Many hospitals in Tanzania have a lot of medical equipment that is not in working order. Chisom gave the example of oxygen concentrators. In Tanzania, it is often difficult to transport oxygen tanks because of bad road conditions, and so many hospitals rely on concentrators for patients that need oxygen. However, concentrators break easily, and some hospitals do not have any personnel with the knowledge to fix the concentrators. One hospital that she worked with had twenty concentrators, but only two were functioning. During her time in Tanzania, Chisom fixed about 30 pieces of equipment. She also learned Swahili, which allowed her to be more effective in her work. Often, hospitals are reluctant to let strangers come in and start tinkering with the equipment out of fear that they may actually make things worse or break the equipment. Chisom’s burgeoning Swahili skills allowed her to communicate with people at the hospital, not only to gain access to equipment, but also to help provide training so that hospital employees would know how to use the equipment properly. In some cases, she also provided rudimentary illustrations. Overall, it sounds like Chisom was able to contribute a lot while also learning a great deal herself and spending some time in a beautiful place! And I am extremely impressed that she learned Swahili so quickly. In my own experience, it’s very challenging to communicate effectively in another language in such a short time!
3. Paul Wright traveled to China and Taiwan with the dual focus of working on his art and graphics skills and improving his Chinese. He first went to China, where he participated in the Duke in China immersion program at UIBE university in Beijing. The program was very intense. Students are not allowed to speak English at any time. There are four hours per day of Chinese instruction as well as one hour per day of conversation with a language partner, and Chinese must be spoken in all the dorms. Paul said his Chinese definitely improved but he still has a long way to go, and that Chinese is a very challenging language for European language speakers. He also had many opportunities to travel, including to the Great Wall. One of the aspects of the experience that Paul found most interesting was spending time with a group of non-fluent Chinese speakers where they could only communicate with one another in Chinese, then, after the program ended, spending a few days traveling with some of his classmates and conversing in English. Paul also did some self-study art work in Beijing. He took figure drawing classes at a Hutong, which is a type of cultural and art center for foreigners. As he tells it, everyone just shows up each day and draws the model. He then traveled to Taiwan where he knows a teacher who is experienced in Illustrator and Photoshop, and did a kind of apprenticeship with her. Paul was able to follow her as she created an image or work from scratch using one of these platforms. Apparently, serious Photoshop and Illustrator work is often done with a tablet and stylus. This is not like an iPad. It’s sort of like a desk blotter with a special pen that detects your hand movements with the stylus at high resolution and translates the motions into the electronic canvas. This takes some getting used to, since unlike the usual situation with drawing, you don’t look at your hand while you draw. Paul also learned about gradient maps, which allow you to take different shades of gray and map them to a color spectrum. From the examples he showed, this appears to be a very powerful technique. Paul said he had a great experience both in the art portion and language portion of his summer.