Duke University was founded in 1924 by James B. Duke, industrialist from tobacco. He transformed the Trinity College into a new gothic campus which opened in 1930.
Duke University is one of the best universities in the US, especially for its medical studies. The hospital of Durham is basicly ranked in the US. But all the major subjects are studied in Duke University: Arts, Languages, Medicine, Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Electrical, Mechanical, Civil and Environmental Engineering. The Campus welcomes 20 000 students from all around the world: certainly from the US, but also from China, Turkey, France, Germany ...
I spent the summer (my training was from May, until July, in the Department
of Civil and Environmental Engineering which
is a part of the Pratt School of Engineering. In this
department, the main themes of research are: engineering mechanics, structural
engineering mechanics and water resources (http://www-cee.egr.duke.edu/).
I worked for Dr John Dolbow, Ph.D. from Northwestern University, Assistant Professor
of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Dr. Dolbow is a full time assistant professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Duke University. His research concerns the development of computational methods for nonlinear problems in solid mechanics. In particular, he is interested in modeling quasi-static and dynamic fracture of structural components and the evolution of interfaces with nonlinear constitutive laws.
The work was to adapt the method used for cracks growth (see [Daux et al.2000]) to the heat transfer problem, especially with phase transformations. The main objective was to implement the phase transformation algorithm in a two dimensional finite element code built by Nicolas Moes, N.Sukumar, J.Dolbow and T.Belytchko (see http://www.tam.nwu.edu/X-FEM/ and http://ceelab4.egr.duke.edu/ dolbow/xfem.html)
The computer room in the Department of CEE was equiped by about thirty Unix stations and about ten windows machines.