Announcing the 2022-23 StudioDuke Student Cohort
The sixth year of Duke’s signature arts mentorship program pairs twelve students with professional mentors to develop their creative projects, including podcasts, literature, theater, film, visual arts and more.
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: Dads, Daughters, and Differences
I’m writing a novel about a Hindu man’s journey being the root cause of his entire extended family’s success in the U.S. while clinging to his Hindu cultural values above all else, the latter of which (along with his lifestyle after being stroke victim), ultimately causes his own family to abandon him when he needs them most.
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.