Graduate Student News - Physics Grad Students Create DukeChina.org

Duke Physics attracts students and researchers from all over the world. In fact, Duke Physics graduate students represent 17 countries.  Five years ago, two Chinese graduate students saw a need to offer support and information to other Chinese students considering Duke—not just for physics studies, but for any subject.

 

Wei Chen and Xing Zong, both PhD students at TUNL, set up www.dukechina.org to provide information to prospective students, current students, alumni, faculty, and visiting scholars about everything from application procedures to rooms for rent to on-campus meetings of the Duke Chinese Scholars and Students Association (DCSSA). The site has had more than 3 million hits, more than half from mainland China.

 

Chen says he and Zong wanted to do something to provide information about Duke to prospective Chinese students. “We thought about doing something to reach out to this community,” he says, “and we thought the best way to do it is with a Web site.” Today, Wei Chen maintains the Web site and the server, and DCSSA updates most of the information on the Web site.

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Active Research Projects

  • Both Chen and Zong expect to finish their PhDs in 2010.
  • Zong’s thesis is “First Measurement of Spin-Dependent Asymmetry from 3He (gamma, n)pp at HIGS.”
  • Chen’s thesis is "A measurement of the differential cross section for the reaction γn → π^−p from deuterium."