
When an educational test bed meets Duke engineering research, engaged learning happens
As a graduate student at Columbia University,Ā Tingjun ChenĀ worked on a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project calledĀ COSMOSĀ that developed educational STEM toolkits for middle school and high school classrooms. Local teachers used the lesson plans and experiments detailed in the toolkits to engage with students on topics ranging from computer systems and internet technology, to the Internet of Things (IoT) and environmental monitoring.Ā Ā
When Chen finished his doctoral degree and accepted a faculty position with electrical and computer engineering at Duke, he knew heād be collaborating closely with the NSF AI Institute for Edge Computing Leveraging Next Generation Networks, or Athena, which is headquartered there. TheĀ Athena AI InstituteĀ is committed to education and workforce development, which it achieves in part through early exposure to STEM, and Chen saw a natural fit with his experience with COSMOS.Ā
Professor of the Practice of ECEĀ Shaundra (Shani) DailyĀ leads the education and workforce development efforts of Athena. Daily had already built a relationship with Inspiring Minds, an organization delivering afterschool and summer programs to minoritized youth at five chapters around the U.S., including one in neighboring Raleigh-Durham area.
“We have the opportunity to connect two very different NSF programsāone on city-scale advanced wireless testbed with an inseparable educational component and one on advancing AI techniques for edge computing systems.”
TINGJUN CHEN, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

āSince COSMOS was going so well in New York, it seemed a perfect opportunity to try it here and connect the kids to the Athena research happening at Duke,ā said Alia Carter, an Athena research scientist who works with DailyāsĀ LIFT Lab. With help from the COSMOS team, particularly professor Thanasis Korakis and his group at NYU, the toolkit successfully transitioned to Duke and Durham.
Duke hosted theĀ local studentsĀ for a series of fourĀ workshopĀ sessions after school to take on some of theĀ existingĀ COSMOSĀ topics likeĀ how waves propagate through the airĀ and how information gets delivered wirelesslyāresearch areasĀ in whichAthena has deepĀ expertise.Ā Ā
āThe lesson on signal interference and AM/FM modulation was a big hit,ā said Sandra Roach, who is a research associate in the workforce development group. āStudents learned about the amplitude and frequency of sound waves, but then they could see it translated by yelling into a microphone and then singing quietly or changing pitch to see how the waveform changed using a software-defined radio.ā
āSeeing how airplanes communicate with ground control was another module that was popular with the students,ā said Chen. āTheir high school is close to the RDU airport, and they enjoyed tracking the airplanes overhead as they passed and seeing how concepts they were learning about were in play in their everyday lives.ā


At the conclusion of the program, the students came to tour Duke and saw research in action across the university and inside labs led by Athena investigators Tingjun Chen, Yiran Chen, Maria Gorlatova, Hai Li and Miroslav Pajic. āThey were able to talk about the research in Tingjunās lab and how it related to other areas of research across Pratt and Duke,ā said Carter. āIt opened their eyes to see whatās out there and whatās possible.āĀ
And it led to a broader discussion about AI, including the ethics of AI and its outsized impact on minoritized communities. COSMOS does not yet have the focus on AI that Athena doesābut rather than leaving that topic out, the Duke team saw an opportunity to informally incorporate the topic and start planning to formally incorporate an AI module in the near future.
āItās important for students to tackle important questions like these,ā said Carter. āQuestions like, āWhatās my own career going to be like? How are the tools and technologies that are coming out going to impact folks who look like me?āāĀ
āWe have the opportunity to connect two very different NSF programsāone on city-scale advanced wireless testbed with an inseparable educational component and one on advancing AI techniques for edge computing systems,ā said Chen. āIt goes to show how NSF can support students at very different levels of learning, and from very different populations and background.ā