Announcing the 2022-23 StudioDuke Student Cohort

About StudioDuke


StudioDuke is a two-semester creative lab and mentorship program providing students the opportunity to take their advanced, on-going creative projects to the next level. StudioDuke is a program of Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship, in collaboration with DEMAN (Duke Entertainment, Media & Arts Network) and Duke Arts. Students are matched with creative industry professionals (including Duke alumni) for one-on-one mentorship that kicks off in the fall semester.

The goal is to bring each project to the point where it is ready to be presented to industry professionals. The StudioDuke team will help facilitate connections, resources, and logistics to support the project. Students will participate in programming aimed to help advance their creative projects and career opportunities.

2022-23 StudioDuke Student Cohort


Benjamin Chipman

TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2023

Major: Sociology with a Human Organization Development & Marketing Focus

Certificate: Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Title of Project: The Yellow Room: A Wantonly Optimistic Podcast

The Yellow Room: A Wantonly Optimistic Podcast is Gen Z’s shared coming-of-age story. Inspired by the power of abundant and reckless optimism, Benjamin Chipman grapples with the unique challenges of early adulthood in the age of Gen Z through personal stories and guest features. It’s a podcast for the oversharer, the uncertain, and those who seek genuine connections.


Sibani Ram

TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2023

Major: Evolutionary Anthropology with a Concentration in Anatomy

Minor: English

Title of Project: This Stanford senior already has two YA novels out. Will her native Florida ban them?

I’m writing an article for the Los Angeles Times about Stanford author-activist, Malavika Kannan, and her queer coming-of-age novel, All the Yellow Suns.


Ayesham Khan

TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2023

Major: IDM in Visual Art & Public Policy

Project Title: Motherboard

My project is a sci-fi writing anthology comprised of shorts (stories and screenplays) focused on the human body’s relationship with technologies interacting with it, such as prosthetics, sex toys, and camera headsets, set in my hometown of Lahore, Pakistan.


John Kang

TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF FALL 2023

Major: Neuroscience and Cinematic Arts

Minor: Theater Studies and Chemistry

Project Title: Washed

A production of a 5-episode web series revolving around an unlikely friendship between two actors who navigate college and friends, race, and the entertainment industry, when a highly anticipated feature is set to be filmed on their campus.


Ondine Peck-Voll

TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2025

Major: Visual Media Studies

Certificate: Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Project Title: My Gummy Trip

My Gummy Trip is a short film about a 20-year-old girl who goes on a gummy-induced trippy journey which ultimately leads to the restart of a relationship with her estranged brother.


Ally Lublin

TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2023

Major: Visual Media Studies

Certificate: Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Project Title: Untitled Screenplay

This historical fiction screenplay follows a pair of Polish siblings taken from home and raised with German foster parents in the 1940s, as well as their attempts to return home after the war.


Nicole Park

TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2023

Major: Visual Media Studies with a Cinematic Arts Concentration

Minor: Economics

Project Title: Washed

The development of a 5-episode web series revolving around an unlikely friendship between two actors who navigate college and friends, race and the entertainment industry, when a highly anticipated feature is set to be filmed on their campus.


Tyler King

PRATT SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING, CLASS OF 2025

Major: Biomedical Engineering & English

Project Title: Ghost-Speak

Twenty years apart, Gold Eyes and his mother, Pearl, must navigate a town whose people want to erase their identities as they struggle to establish their lives in an America designed to exclude them.


Sascha Seinfeld

TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2023

Major: English

Minor: Cinematic Arts

Certificate: Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Project Title: “Literally”

A screenplay about two thieves—a man and woman—who decide to steal a house on wheels and drive it across the country. Later, it is revealed that they aren’t actually criminals, but struggling screenwriters, who don’t know how to finish their script, so they inhabit their characters to inspire the ending.


Jakari Coles

TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2023

Major: Cinematic Arts

Minor: Theater Studies & Psychology

Project Title: Enwood

Enwood is an hour-long single-camera “dramatic comedy” that follows the life of a Queer Black nineteen year-old who tries to enter the acting industry.


Quinn Smith, Chickasaw Nation

TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES

Major: Public Policy

Minor: Cinematic Arts

Project Title: Leaving to Belong (TV Screenplay)

“Leaving to Belong” is a half-hour comedy TV-pilot about Native American college freshmen trying to find community at an ivy league institution where the world’s brightest don’t know that Native American people still exist (based on real life experiences).


Ruby Wang

TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2024

Major: English and Visual Arts

Project Title: 2001

2001 is a multimedia compilation of artworks and writings on my selfhood to reflect upbringing, motherhood, interpersonal relationships, sexuality, and “labels” of identity.