Academics: Only at Duke: Academic, Cultural and Research Centers

Interested in cutting-edge, environmentally friendly home-building technologies or exploring life at the nanoscale? Want to observe primate behavior in a natural setting or unlock the mysteries of bioinformatics? That, and much more, is possible at Duke, where we believe that the educational experience goes far beyond classrooms and assignments.

Our diverse, state-of-the-art facilities allow students to become fully immersed in their work. Our research centers are designed to give our undergraduates an opportunity to combine theory and practice in innovative settings. By making abstract concepts tangible, our students gain a deeper understanding of the mysteries they seek to unravel.

Duke Smart Home is a 4,500-square-foot residence/laboratory, operated by the Pratt School of Engineering. Bringing together students from engineering, environmental and earth sciences, and computer science, the Smart House will be home to 10 undergraduate students and one resident advisor each year. What makes Duke's Smart House different? By living in their laboratory, Smart House students are constantly aware of the benefits—and consequences—of their technological designs and deployment decisions.

The Duke University Lemur Center is the world's largest sanctuary for rare and endangered prosimian primates. Nestled on 85 acres in Duke Forest, the Lemur Center houses about 250 animals. The Lemur Center promotes research and understanding of prosimians and their natural habitat as a means of advancing the frontiers of knowledge, and its research opportunities—including those for undergraduates—stimulate intellectual growth and sustain global biodiversity.

The Duke Herbarium contains nearly 800,000 specimens of vascular plants, bryophytes, algae, lichens, and basidiomycete fungi. The collection is especially rich in specimens from the southeastern United States, but has synoptic representation worldwide. Think you have a green thumb? Each summer, seven Duke undergraduates are selected to participate in a summer research program in "Bioinformatic and Phylogenetic Approaches to the Study of Plant and Fungal Biodiversity."

Perkins Library System maintains more than 5,360,000 volumes. The collection includes 11 million manuscripts and more than two million public documents. Among its many special research collections is information from and about South Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe, Russia, and Poland, as well as one of the country's strongest collections of Canadian Studies information. In addition, the new Bostock Library adds five full floors of collections and research and study areas, including a beautiful two-story reading room. Duke's Professional School Libraries house extensive resources in business, law, and medicine.

Nasher Museum of Art, designed by architect Rafael Vinoly and named for alumnus and noted art collector Raymond Nasher, is an impressive new center for the arts and multidisciplinary learning on campus. It consists of five pavilions that house three large gallery spaces, a 173-seat auditorium, museum shop, classrooms, administrative offices, and a café. The building provides 14,000 square feet of gallery space and another 13,000 square feet of display space in the atrium, which is designed to accommodate large works as well as temporary installations.

The Fitzpatrick Center is Duke's newest teaching and research facility. This 322,000-square-foot interdisciplinary engineering, medicine, and applied sciences facility brings together faculty across scientific disciplines in bioengineering, photonics and communications, integrated environmental sensing and simulation, and biologically inspired materials. It also contains extensive laboratories, classrooms, departmental offices, a state-of-the-art vivarium for in vivo research, an atrium, and an Irish café.

The Levine Science Research Center is the largest single-site interdisciplinary scientific facility at any American university. The 341,000-square-foot center was created to encourage world-class collaborative research that crosses traditional science boundaries. It brings together students and researchers from Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, the Duke Medical Center, the Nicholas School of the Environment, and the Pratt School of Engineering.

The French Science Center, completed in fall of 2007, features state-of-the-art research and teaching laboratories for genomics, biological chemistry, materials science, nanoscience, physical biology, and bioinformatics. This $115 million, 280,000-square-foot building brings together students and researchers from the departments of chemistry and biology, biological anthropology and anatomy, mathematics and physics. The center also provides six new research greenhouses to house one of the most diverse collections of plants under glass in the Southeast, comprising more than 2,000 different species from varied environments.

The Sarah P. Duke Gardens, one of the premier public gardens in the country, offers much more than beautiful flowers and a peaceful setting for study or relaxation. It also offers summer internship opportunities that give students an in-depth introduction to public horticulture. The interns rotate through all areas of the Gardens as well as its educational and operational departments, and they must take part in an independent research project.

Duke’s seven interdisciplinary University Institutes offer students unique opportunities to engage in problem-centered, collaborative, and often entrepreneurial knowledge generation and dissemination involving multiple disciplinary perspectives.  Addressing areas as diverse as the social consequences of genetic differences, global health inequalities, a changing natural environment, the demography of aging, and brain and behavior dysfunction, the institutes are: Duke Global Health Institute, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Kenan Institute for Ethics, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, and Social Science Research Institute.

The Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture is a gathering place where students and faculty can address issues of social and cultural relevance for students interested in African-American, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American history and culture. Programs include art exhibits, musical events, film series, and lecture-discussions.

These examples only begin to scratch the surface of the outstanding research facilities at Duke. Want to see more? Duke's Sanford Institute of Public Policy and Marine Laboratory are pioneering academic facilities that can be found only at Duke. The Duke University Phytotron, now part of the Biology Plant Growth Facility, is a multiple-user facility for controlled-environment research on plants. The Phytotron consists of numerous growth chambers and greenhouses that can simulate most climatic conditions in the world. The numerous interdisciplinary centers in each of Duke’s nine schools also conduct innovative research and offer cutting-edge collaborative programming.