Assistant Director of Duke CGGC, Mike Hensen, gave this presentation at the Regional Competitiveness and Growth Center (RCGC) launch event in Astana, Kazakhstan.

1. © 2015 Duke CGGC
DUKE SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH INSTITUTE (SSRI):
AN OVERVIEW
Astana, Kazakhstan
November 18, 2015
Mike Hensen
Duke University,
Center on Globalization, Governance & Competitiveness

2. © 2015 Duke CGGC
AGENDA
1. Institutional History of Duke SSRI
2. Evolution of Duke SSRI
 “Pre-2013 Duke SSRI”
 “2015 Duke SSRI”
3. Fitting the “New” SSRI into the Interdisciplinary
Landscape at Duke
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3. © 2015 Duke CGGC
INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF DUKE SSRI

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DUKE SSRI
• Duke University 2001 strategic plan envisaged catalytic
presence in interdisciplinary social science research and
education
• SSRI opened its doors in 2003 as one of Duke’s signature
institutes and Centers
• For the first 10 years, SSRI served as an incubator or
umbrella institute for disparate research centers directed
by individual Duke professors
• Provided administrative support to the centers in the areas
of finance, information technology, human resources, grant
administration and communications
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5. © 2015 Duke CGGC
Economies of Scale
• Shared Resources
Connecting
Communities
WHY DOES SSRI EXIST?
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EVOLUTION OF DUKE SSRI

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“Pre-2013 SSRI”
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Year 1: Construction &Planning for
Gross Hall Move
Year 2: Move to Gross Hall and Pilot
Infrastructure in Gross Hall
Year 3: Introduction of fully operational
“New SSRI” to Campus and
incubate communities
3 YEAR TRANSITION TO “NEW” SSRI
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9. © 2015 Duke CGGC
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10. © 2015 Duke CGGC
FITTING THE “NEW” SSRI INTO THE
INTERDISCIPLINARY LANDSCAPE AT DUKE

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SSRI RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE
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EMERGING BIG “TREES” OF CONNECTED COMMUNITIES
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EHDi
Educational
Programs
Research
Working
Groups
Bass
Projects
University
Partnership
Incubating
Research
Projects
Data
Repositories
Community
Projects
Pilot
Projects

14. © 2015 Duke CGGC
DUKE SSRI
• So, how does this “interdisciplinary”
idea really function?
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15. © 2015 Duke CGGC
Successful division of labor
…
Physics
…
Philosophy
Chemistry
Biology
Mathematics
Statistics
Economics
PoliticalScience
Sociology
Psychology
Anthropology
History
Classics
Literature
TheArts
This evolution of disciplinary specialization has led to the most
extraordinary advance in human knowledge and well-being.
So why isn’t it good enough?
CLAIM: The most pressing challenges we face in the 21st Century
cannot be addressed from within separated disciplines.

16. © 2015 Duke CGGC
Example of 21st Century Challenge
…
Physics
…
Philosophy
Chemistry
Biology
Mathematics
Statistics
Economics
PoliticalScience
Sociology
Psychology
Anthropology
History
Classics
Literature
TheArts
Health care
Clinical research of
course continues to be
vital …
… as does the search
for more
sophisticated
technological
advances.
But we now
understand that
behavioral
choices are as
important to
medical outcomes
as clinical
treatments.
Which disciplines matter?

17. © 2015 Duke CGGC
Example of 21st Century Challenge
……
Philosophy
Mathematics
Statistics
Economics
PoliticalScience
History
Classics
Literature
TheArts
Health care
But we now
understand that
behavioral
choices are as
important to
medical outcomes
as clinical
treatments.
The historical context
gives rise to the
political constraints
reformers face …
… and provides the
backdrop for deep
ethical inquiry as
health care changes.

18. © 2015 Duke CGGC
Example of 21st Century Challenge
……
Mathematics
Statistics
Economics
Literature
TheArts
Health care
The historical context
gives rise to the
political constraints
reformers face …
… and provides the
backdrop for deep
ethical inquiry as
health care changes.
Big data has
emerged as a
means for linking
clinical and
behavioral
choices as
medicine
becomes more
targeted …

19. © 2015 Duke CGGC
Example of 21st Century Challenge
……
Literature
TheArts
Health care
Big data has
emerged as a
means for linking
clinical and
behavioral
choices as
medicine
becomes more
targeted …
… and the arts
provide an
enduring forum
to explore,
communicate
and humanize
the issues we
confront.

20. © 2015 Duke CGGC
Example of 21st Century Challenge
Health care
… and the arts
provide an
enduring forum
to explore,
communicate
and humanize
the issues we
confront.
Each discipline can individually make its mark on the health care challenges
of our time,
but collaborations across disciplines can create more than the sum of its
parts.

21. © 2015 Duke CGGC
• Among the new ‘big
trees’ of connected
communities in the
interdisciplinary
landscape at Duke is
one called ‘Education
and Human
Development, (EHD)
• Themes within EHD
Emerging bottom up
EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
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The North Carolina in the Global
Economy project has existed at
Duke CGGC for many years and is
now gaining new momentum as a
project within this Education and
Human Development focus.

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•Intersection of
Social Science
and Medicine
EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT (CONT’D)
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An early motivating example …
Guillermo Sapiro is a
newly recruited faculty
member in Electrical
Engineering. His
expertise is machine
learning, particularly in
relation to video.
Helen Egger is head of
the Division of Duke
Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry.
They both have an interest in the autism spectrum in children but have
very different, non-overlapping expertise.

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Different Expertise, Shared interests
Guillermo knows how
to use data on what
humans detect to teach
machines how to
detect the same thing –
perhaps better than
the humans.
Helen has hundreds of
hours of video of young
children being
screened for autism –
which is very hard to
detect in young
children -- by skilled
professionals.
They live their professional lives in very different parts of the university,
each running their own separate labs.

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Introductions Are made …

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Introductions Are made … and in idea is Born
100’s of videos …
… and machines that
learn from video to do it
even better than humans
What if we could design a
cheap camera that could track
eyes and head movements and
identify early indicators of
autism?

28. © 2015 Duke CGGC
Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration Begins …
Within weeks of meeting, they integrated their labs and the
work began.
They brought undergraduates with different technical skills
into their teams.

29. © 2015 Duke CGGC
“2015 DUKE SSRI”
• At a university such as Duke, where the medical,
engineering and social science communities occupy
significant shared intellectual and physical space,
there is huge potential in exploring the potential
collaborations between these communities.
• SSRI is in a unique position to catalyze that
collaboration.
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30. © 2015 Duke CGGC
http://www.cggc.duke.edu
mike.hensen@duke.edu
Mike Hensen
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