Duke MIDS

Capstone Partnerships

What is a Capstone?

Capstone projects pair external partners with teams of second year MIDS students to solve impactful problems. External partners can include any agency external to the MIDS program and have historically included companies, NGOs, health care centers, and researchers, with an emphasis on industrial partners.  As an interdisciplinary program, we look to form partnerships across a wide variety of domains.

Partners provide a problem directly related to their interests, and meet with the student team throughout the year. The student team works on the partner’s problem to provide related deliverables that often include both insights/understanding to the problem and relevant code bases. MIDS Capstone Projects require a full academic year (September – April).

The capstone projects allow our partners to explore a domain they may not otherwise have the resources to investigate and to work with (and potentially recruit) our students. For our students, these projects provide an educational project in which the students can investigate real-world problems while interacting with and learning from people with vested interest in the project outcome.

Information for Capstone Partners (PDF)

View Past Capstone Projects

What Are the Benefits?

  • Work with talented and engaged graduate students studying interdisciplinary data science and statistics. View the MIDS student profile.
  • Increase resources to pursue new projects.
  • Expand your recruitment pool.

How Do I Apply?

Proposals are due by June 1, 2025.

Learn More About Becoming a Capstone Partner

Have your questions answered about becoming a Capstone Partner during one of our drop-in Zooms (Zoom link).

12:00 – 1:00 PM (ET) on the following dates:

Capstone Partner Information

Download PDF
“We know when companies are hiring data scientists, they are looking for experience. They know people learn things in classes, but they want to hire people who understand how to actually put together a data project. Because of the Capstone, I know our students will be able to hit the ground running and create value to the company they are working for.”
Robert Calderbank

MIDS Co-Director

  • January 22
  • February 5
  • February 19
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  • March 19
  • April 2
  • April 16
  • April 30
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Capstone Symposium

The Capstone Symposium for the Class of 2025 will be held in Gross Hall on Friday April 4, 2025. This is an exciting event where student teams present their final Capstone projects. Partners and community members are welcome and encouraged to attend. Contact us for more information at:

dukemids_capstone@duke.edu

“Capstones allow us to do a longer-term project per industry standards. The problems are from real-world clients. This allows students to experience many of the growing pains associated with real-world data science before getting out to the workforce.”

Derek Wales

MIDS ‘21, Data Scientist, Dell Technologies

Capstone Partner Experience

Zachary Abzug from Proofpoint describes his experience as a MIDS Capstone Partner.