Student-Undergrad News

Congratulations to Duke senior undergraduate student Nick Nease and his team — Kellan Hepditch, Jake Sapp, and Ben Verlander — on advancing to the regional finals of the Stanford Global Sustainability Challenge! Selected from 350 global applicants, their team earned a spot among the top ventures competing in the North America and South America region. This recognition reflects months of thoughtful iteration, deep research, and bold problem-solving focused on accelerating scalable climate solutions.

Duke undergraduate sophomore Neha Jatla recently placed second in the Deloitte Duke Case Competition alongside her teammates Sudiksha Battineni, Sophia Dionello Hinshaw, and Noa Bremen. Neha shared that the EGR 283 Introduction to Product management course played a critical role in preparing her team for success.

Have a software idea you want to bring to life quickly? Interested in learning how AI-powered products are built in the real world? The Duke Christensen Center's Product Lab is offering a NEW summer course EGR 590 - AI Driven Product for Builders.

Are you a Duke student working on a startup, building a technology, or exploring an idea you want to keep moving forward? The Christensen Center is hosting Founders Fridays, a monthly, open mentoring session for student founders during the Spring 2026 semester.

Duke University has received $11 million from the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation, a private family foundation based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on educating engineers for the most pressing challenges of today. The award brings the foundation’s total support for the program to more than $30 million.

The January 2026 Christensen Family Center for Innovation (CFCI) newsletter celebrates the recent accomplishments of Duke Product Lab teams, highlighting final project demos from Fall 2025 that produced innovative solutions ranging from mobile apps and AI tools to hardware prototypes; and highlights recent student innovators’ stories.

Oluwadarasimi (Dara) Ajiboye, Class of 2028, is a Computer Science major with an Innovation & Entrepreneurship Certificate who discovered his passion for product management early at Duke and has since built end-to-end PM experience through Product Lab, Code+, and coursework. Now a CFCI Fellow, Dara is excited to give back as a mentor and leader while continuing to grow as a product manager and educator within the Product Lab community.

Student-led startup pursues award-winning treatment for patients with disruptions to their autonomic body processes.

Christensen Center Product Lab Fellow Jessie Chan combines her passion for psychology, technology, and collaboration to create meaningful solutions, drawing on experiences from Duke’s Product Lab and industry internships to mentor peers and help grow Duke’s culture of product innovation.

Christensen Center Product Lab Fellow Tatum Wall (’26), an Economics major and student-athlete, brings her passion for teamwork and leadership to product management, where collaboration and strategy meet to create meaningful solutions. From her first Product Management course at Duke to an internship at Amazon Web Services and now mentoring student teams in the inaugural Product Lab cohort, Tatum exemplifies how CFCI empowers students to turn curiosity and collaboration into real-world impact.

Christensen Center Product Lab Fellow Nicole Nie (’27) is an Economics major with a passion for connecting ideas across disciplines through product management. Inspired by the role of PMs as “conductors of the orchestra,” Nicole has grown from a curious first-year student in Product Management 1 to a teaching assistant and now a Product Lab Fellow, helping shape the future of Duke’s emerging product innovation community.

Duke student-founded startup Students Who Sit is bridging the gap between students and faculty by connecting families with trusted babysitters. Students Who Sit is a recipient of Duke CFCI's GoBig Award, a program that supports tech-enabled new products and services that have the potential to create transformative, positive impact—made possible through the generosity of the Baquerizo Family. Students Who Sit also participated in CFCI Product Lab's first Product Management 2 cohort.