Project Overview
Project Type
Cohort
Buy42
Developing Upcycled Products and DIY Craft Kits
In collaboration with Buy42, students will explore how creative design and public participation can turn unused goods into upcycled products and DIY craft kits that support charitable causes. Building on Buy42's experience with donated materials and corporate team activities, students can visit its stores, identify reusable materials, develop product samples, assemble kits, design packaging and visual materials, and create video tutorials. They can then select a practical application for individual consumers, corporate activities, or community programs, assess user needs, and design an appropriate experience. With pilot opportunities and community resources from Buy42 where feasible, students will conduct small-scale tests, gather feedback, and refine their products and approaches to promotion and sustainable operations. The project aims to encourage reuse, raise awareness of charitable causes, and extend social impact. Buy42 will support store visits, mentoring, and regular feedback throughout research, product development, and pilot testing.
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Haworth
Beyond Rest: Designing for Cognitive Capital
This project explores how people can recognize mental fatigue and take effective breaks before their attention, judgment, and performance decline. Working with Haworth, students will identify common situations in which cognitive fatigue occurs during study or work, examine current approaches to rest and recovery, and investigate activities, environments, and tools that could support cognitive restoration. They will develop and test a concept for a restorative space, a fatigue-recognition or restoration app, or an integrated solution. Expected outcomes include research findings on common fatigue triggers, signs, and recovery needs; practical recommendations for future workplace and learning environments; and a design concept. Students are encouraged to use interviews, observation, simple prototyping, and user testing. The project focuses on everyday study and work experiences rather than clinical or medical aspects of fatigue. Haworth will provide a project briefing, selected references, and feedback during interim and final reviews; site visits or product access may be arranged where applicable.
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Furniture of the Future: Designing Value in the AI Era
This research project asks how smart furniture and spaces can respond to human needs and support what people value as AI becomes part of everyday life. Students will review Haworth's human-centered design heritage, research emerging AI-enabled furniture, workplace technologies, spaces, and companies, and design and conduct a survey of younger consumers. The research will identify what consumers value in future furniture and where existing products fall short, then define an opportunity for development that integrates AI technology. Expected outcomes include research findings on the technology applications and values that matter most to younger consumers; an opportunity brief specifying a workplace need, relevant market gap, and design direction; and an AI-integrated furniture or space concept communicated through sketches, renderings, a storyboard, or a simple digital model. Haworth will provide an introductory briefing, selected workplace and product references, and milestone feedback. Connections with relevant experts and access to selected products or spaces may be provided where feasible.
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AI at Work: How Organizations Use AI for Individual Tasks and Teamwork
This project examines how organizations currently use AI for individual work, teamwork, and collaboration, and where they see opportunities for further automation and human-AI collaboration. Students will study three organizations across two or three sectors, prepare research questions, conduct interviews or focus groups, and potentially use surveys. For each organization, they will investigate how employees use AI, the difficulties they encounter, and new uses or automation being explored. Comparing the cases will reveal similarities and differences in implementation and team practices. Expected outcomes include a case study for each organization, visual workflow maps showing where AI is used and the respective roles of people and AI, a comparison table across cases, and practical guidelines for improving future use. Haworth will provide a project briefing, relevant Future of Work perspectives, and feedback at key milestones, and may participate as one of the case-study organizations subject to availability.
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Gaslighting Check
Research on Emotional Abuse and Prototype Development for Digital Support in Difficult Relationships
Working with Gaslighting Check, students will compare research, support services, and digital tools addressing emotional manipulation, emotional abuse, and domestic violence in China and the United States. The comparison will examine laws and policies, academic evidence and leading researchers, public understanding, and support services. Students will identify gaps and priority user needs, develop a phased China roadmap, recommend product and service adaptations, and outline potential partnerships. They will translate their findings into a product proposal and a Chinese-language prototype that explores helping users understand relationship dynamics, privately record incidents, and find local support resources. Potential applications on wearable devices such as Apple Watch may also be explored, considering privacy, interaction, and everyday needs. User testing and feedback will inform refinement. Deliverables include a comparative report, bibliography and researcher/institution directory, research and partnership priorities, a China roadmap, product iteration recommendations, and a prototype. The partner can provide demonstrations, public materials, technical guidance, and milestone feedback.
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Kunshan Municipal Archives
Kunshan Now and Then: Kunshan Archives × DKU Youth Urban Memory
Students will work with Kunshan Municipal Archives to explore city memories through a photography exhibition pairing historic landmark images with contemporary photographs. The Archives will select photographs with identifiable dates and locations. Student teams will visit the sites, photograph them from viewpoints and compositions matching the originals as closely as possible, and help edit, pair, and organize the images. During the exhibition, students will serve as volunteer guides and encourage visitors to share their memories. Paired photographs and landmark stories will show changes in Kunshan and everyday life, followed by a digital image collection for future cultural outreach. The Archives will provide historic materials, check archival and historical content, and seek exhibition space and third-party design and production support. Suitable awards are planned for outstanding work. A 30-day exhibition is tentatively proposed for the glass space at Chengtou Life+; project dates, work numbers, student participation, and funding remain subject to agreement.
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Runlang Psychological Development Center
Public Outreach and Community Activities to Support Children’s Development
Working with Runlang, students will develop storytelling, public outreach, or community activities that raise awareness of children's development needs and encourage public participation and financial support. One direction focuses on Treasure House, a community space serving local children, including those from migrant families: students can draw on authorized project materials and family stories to develop storytelling, themed outreach, or participatory activities with reusable plans and materials. A second direction involves designing activities for children and parents, covering content, public participation, and publicity in a format suitable for repeated events and available resources. A family hike is one possible starting point. Students may choose either direction, research a proposal, and refine it through small-scale testing. Final deliverables should include an activity or communications plan and practical implementation materials that Runlang can maintain and repeat with its existing staffing and resources. The center can provide project materials, community introductions, staff feedback, and pilot or publicity support where feasible.
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Stevin
Team AI Agents: Evaluation and User Research
Students will explore how Stevin's shared AI agent performs in real collaboration scenarios and how teams experience working with it. One direction develops structured team-agent evaluation tasks with expected outcomes and grading rubrics, including tests of personal memory, information sharing, and permissions. Students will calibrate LLM-as-judge graders against human ratings and integrate automated evaluation into Langfuse. Deliverables target more than 100 scenarios, calibrated judge prompts and a human-agreement report, an automated evaluation pipeline, and a benchmark comparing at least two models. A second direction studies adoption by non-developer teams through a 4–6 week field study with 3–5 DKU teams, combining diary studies, experience sampling, usage logs, and interviews to examine trust, delegation, memory, permissions, and proactive behavior. Outputs include a study protocol, anonymized dataset and thematic analysis, design recommendations, and a short paper or poster. Prior AI-agent experience is not required. Participant research requires informed consent, anonymization, and DKU ethics review where required; students will not access customer production data.
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Kunshan Tinglin Community Health Service Center
Community Research on Chronic Disease and Metabolic Health
In partnership with Tinglin Community Health Service Center, students will study community needs in chronic disease prevention and everyday health management, focusing on metabolic health and lifestyle habits. Possible topics include residents' understanding of fatty liver, eating and physical activity habits, or factors affecting sustained participation in health management. The team and center will select a focused question and target group. Methods may include literature review, questionnaires, and interviews to understand knowledge, behaviors, and support needs, alongside descriptive analysis of non-sensitive or de-identified information where available and authorized. Site visits and discussions with general practitioners and chronic disease management staff will help students understand local services and residents' difficulties. Expected outputs include a research plan and data collection tools, a research report, and evidence-based recommendations for health management or education. The center can support staff discussions, resident introductions, fieldwork coordination, professional feedback, and basic venues. Methods, deliverables, and practical arrangements will be agreed within a manageable student scope.
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PEER
County Studies
This collaboration aims to engage DKU students in county-level field research together with PEER’s research team through a community exploration project. With mentorship and accompaniment from the PEER team, students will conduct on-site visits in county communities and use methods such as Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and oral history. They will conduct in-depth research on local humanities, social issues, and community development topics through field observation and interviews. By researching local residents’ stories and understanding the realities of community life, students will gain solid hands-on field research experience and develop deeper insight into the context and root causes of social issues, building a practical foundation for future public action and social innovation.
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Vidacity Shanghai
STEM Program Design
This project will be carried out in collaboration with Vidacity Shanghai. Participating students will, under guidance, design and implement creative STEM programs, which may include hands-on projects using design thinking, 3D printing, and other maker-based activities. The curriculum is tailored for children aged 5–10 and emphasizes both creative exploration and practical application. Students will also travel to Shanghai to mentor, teach, and iteratively refine the program on-site.
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Impact Hub Shanghai
SDG-related Consultation
Under professional guidance, participating students will conduct an in-depth research study on the start-up communities in Central China. The research will examine the landscape and structure of local entrepreneurial ecosystems, including community characteristics, operational models, typical activities, stakeholder engagement, and emerging development trends. Students will explore how young entrepreneurs build networks, access resources, and develop early-stage ideas within these communities. Through this project, students will gain hands-on experience in ecosystem mapping, community analysis, and qualitative interviewing, strengthening their understanding of China’s evolving innovation environment.
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Reactor School
Shanghai Start-up Community Research
This project aims to provide students with authentic industry practice through university-corporate collaboration. Under the guidance of Impact Hub Shanghai, students will participate in a series of consulting-style research projects centered on climate, sustainability, renewable energy, and clean technology. Typical working content includes stakeholder mapping, ecosystem mapping, innovation/technology assessment, and case research, helping students understand industry value chains, key stakeholder groups, and the interactions. Between Feb 2026 and Jul 2026, possible research topics include financing support for county-level innovation and entrepreneurship and coordinated low-carbon transition across the petrochemical and chemical value chains. Through the process, students will strengthen systems thinking and research capabilities, deepen their understanding of real-world operations in sustainable development and clean-tech sectors, and build a solid foundation for future career development in environment, energy, and social innovation.
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WhaleSights
Going Global Research
“Going global” has become one of the hottest topics and top priorities for Chinese companies today. This project focuses on a specific outbound-expansion actor or a target destination and ultimately aims to produce key insights into the current state of global expansion in a particular sub-sector and its core driving forces. By studying how Chinese companies expand into specific regions or countries, including patterns such as sector coverage, capital flows, and technological upgrading, the project seeks to uncover underlying rules and decision-making logics. Alternatively, by examining regions or countries with extensive historical experience in global expansion, the project will analyze the motivations, execution, and outcomes of overseas expansion in a given sub-sector and distill actionable business insights. The project outcomes may support Chinese medium-to-large enterprises seeking international growth opportunities, while helping students broaden their global perspective, learn business research methodologies, and develop a deeper understanding of business and technology decision-making.
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Shanghai Xin’ao Brightness Charity Foundation
AI-embedded Companion Toy Design
Retinoblastoma is a malignant ocular tumor that primarily occurs in children, whose treatment can involve years of frequent follow-up visits, hospitalization, and chemotherapy. The project responds to gaps in emotional companionship for affected children and their families, while also creating a way for elderly beneficiaries of Xin’ao Brightness programs to give back. With support from DKU’s university-enterprise co-creation platform, the project plans to connect elderly participants with children and leverage design innovation and AI technologies to build an intergenerational companionship and psychological care public welfare system.
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memU
Agentic Memory Framework Design
This project aims to provide students with a high-level technical co-creation experience through a real codebase, open-ended product iteration, and engineering practice. Students will join the memU product and open-source ecosystem as collaborators and directly contribute to upgrades and iterations. Possible work includes submitting high-quality pull requests, developing new feature modules, extending existing capabilities, optimizing core memory logic and system architecture, performance tuning, documentation improvements, and long-term maintenance. The project will also produce tutorials, engineering guides, API references, developer documentation, technical articles, case analyses, and project showcases.
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Xiao-X-Bao
Open Coding Community
In collaboration with Xiao-X-Bao, students will select projects of interest via the Task Hub, join project groups, and collaborate with external engineers and leading domain physicians on co-development. Development work will focus primarily on code implementation and technical infrastructure, while some projects may also involve designing community incentive mechanisms and operations strategies. Potential projects include a Leukemia AI Care Assistant, an intelligent RAG system for three major gynecological cancers, a radiotherapy assistant RAG system, an AI assistant for dual-condition heart and mental-health care, an osteosarcoma project, and operations initiatives involving 2,000+ patient groups.
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FSHD Qingnian Road Community & The Chance Foundation
Rare Disease Open Coding Community
This project focuses on leveraging technology to address health-related challenges through an open-source community supporting rare disease patients, centered on Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD). Participants will understand patient-community needs and collaboratively develop one or two new functional modules on an existing open-source platform. Potential focus areas include symptom tracking, medical resource or case sharing, caregiver task management and reminders, accessibility-oriented UI optimization, data visualization and statistical analysis, and anonymized research-data collection. The team will progress through research, prototyping, user testing, iterative development, and a final presentation.
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Six Arts Museum
Exhibition
This project will focus on deep collaboration around cultural and creative co-creation. Six Arts Museum will select exhibits from its collection of folk and cultural artworks to be loaned to DKU for a short-term themed exhibition on campus. A DKU student team will participate end-to-end in curatorial work, including theme ideation, exhibition and spatial design, installation and layout, exhibition narrative, copywriting, and interactive experience design. The project also aims to build a sustainable collaboration platform between Six Arts Museum and DKU.
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Digital Archive
Six Arts Museum holds a large collection of traditional objects and folk artifacts but lacks a systematic digital archive. This project aims to support the museum in building a standardized Digital Archive by producing high-resolution images for representative exhibits and organizing supporting information such as historical background, cultural context, craftsmanship details, written descriptions, and background stories. The archive will support preservation, broader access, research, educational reuse, future online exhibitions, and public communications.
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Daily Tea
Market Design & Execution
This project aims to design and execute a Chinese-aesthetics-themed market by combining students’ creative practice with local cultural scenes in Kunshan, building a platform that integrates cultural expression, community participation, and capability development. Themes may include “New Chinese Lifestyle” and “Everyday Expressions of Eastern Aesthetics.” Students may collaborate with the DKU tea club to design tea-culture experience sessions or independently design booths and activities, gaining experience across planning, operations, and on-site execution.
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Taskforce Consultancy
Podcast Creation on Sustainability
This project aims to engage students in planning and producing a podcast series titled Dialogues on Sustainability, centered on ESG principles and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Students will be responsible for topic selection, scriptwriting, recording and editing, community engagement, and social media outreach, and may invite faculty, students, or community members as guests. The project also encourages broader DKU community dialogue around sustainability through online sharing sessions or campus events.
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Design Innovation Institute Shanghai (DIIS)
Re-Design Waste Station
This project aims to develop innovative waste-station solutions aligned with China’s dual-carbon goals. By researching current waste stations and relevant design practices in China and abroad, students will develop modular and productized solutions that can be flexibly configured for communities or villages of different sizes, while improving appearance, circulation routes, installation, and compatibility with waste-collection vehicles. Proposals may include small urban-community versions, larger new-rural versions, kitchen-waste processing modules, and advanced features such as on-site processing devices and green-energy systems.
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Watson Institute
Social Innovation Podcast
This project will conduct in-depth interviews and produce multimedia narratives around representative projects within the Watson Institute social-innovation incubation platform. Participants will interview founders or core team members of social enterprises and use podcasts as the primary medium to document the path from concept formation to real-world implementation, including development paths, key challenges, breakthroughs, and sustainability strategies. Students will develop interview, multimedia storytelling, critical-thinking, and social-entrepreneurship skills.
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Buy42
Creative Co-Creation
Buy42 hopes to collaborate with Duke Kunshan University to create a co-creation platform integrating narrative expression, sustainable design, and inclusive experiences. The project aims to transform Buy42’s public-welfare resources, circular materials, and humanistic stories into innovative carriers through cultural and creative product development, interactive experience planning, and spatial-media co-creation. Possible directions include inclusive co-creation of peripheral products using 3D printing and digital design, universal-design principles, AR story interactions, sustainability-themed workshops, and public-welfare pop-up exhibitions.
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PEER & DKU Partner
Through the collaboration between Duke Kunshan University and PEER, this project recruits the “PEER & DKU Partner” to support and expand PEER’s educational and social innovation practices. Activities may include launching Green Education projects in county areas, mentoring secondary-school student teams, helping define challenge themes and solutions, participating in challenge competitions and evaluation, and building and managing a DKU volunteer system to systematically teach Social Innovation concepts and methods to county schools and local high school students in Kunshan.
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Daily Tea
Tea Club
Leveraging Daily Tea’s cultural content and community-operation experience, this project aims to co-build a student-led tea culture club at DKU. The club will support students in designing and hosting activities for learning, sharing, and hands-on experience around tea culture, promote understanding and youth-oriented expression of Chinese traditional culture on campus, and create cross-cultural interaction opportunities for international students and partners. The project also develops students’ organizational, cultural-creative, and intercultural-communication skills.
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Taskforce Consultancy
Suzhou Culture Promoting
This project aims to promote DKU students’ in-depth understanding and first-hand experience of Suzhou’s history and cultural landscapes through student-led community building and event participation, while strengthening intercultural communication and civic/community engagement. A student leader will serve as project Ambassador, responsible for promotion, volunteer recruitment, organization, and coordination. The ambassador will work with Taskforce Consultancy, Suzhou Foreign Affairs Institute, and Suzhou Language Volunteers for the Global Visitors initiative to design and execute innovative and interactive activities.
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JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle)
Parallel Library
In the process of practicing “waste rebirth” and community space creation, the Parallel Library project has formed a mature sustainable public-welfare model. This project intends to cooperate deeply with DKU students to break the boundaries of the existing model, enhance innovation and local adaptability, and integrate young perspectives and innovative thinking. Core cooperation will revolve around co-creation of sustainable design topics and design of community activity models.
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S-Tron China
DKU Start-up Community Building
This project establishes a strategic partnership with S-Tron to recruit a student ambassador from DKU. The ambassador will act as a bridge between DKU and S-Tron, supporting joint programs and activities and connecting on- and off-campus resources. Responsibilities include supporting S-Tron programs at DKU, planning and organizing on-campus meetups for student entrepreneurs and talks, participating in events such as TechTrek, and promoting deeper university-enterprise collaboration. Students gain experience in project management, cross-organization communication, leadership, and innovation.
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Kunshan Gaoxinqu Tinglin Community Health Service Center
Smart Health Care-Support
In partnership with Kunshan Gaoxinqu Tinglin Community Health Service Center, students will collaborate with the community to develop and practice smart-healthcare projects, exploring opportunities to optimize primary healthcare services around user needs, data support, and technology enablement. Students may shadow community general practitioners in offline clinical practice and participate in health education outreach, home visits with family doctors, and health-checkup support for older adults. The project develops understanding of community health needs, real-world problem solving, and social responsibility.
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Weicheng Community (Supported by Leren Public Welfare Development Center)
Community Buliding
This project establishes a strategic partnership with Weicheng Community, a high-quality aging community rich in “silver-hair wisdom.” The challenge is to design creative activities or digital platforms that foster intergenerational exchange and activate senior resources, with an emphasis on long-term operations and sustainable student-community initiatives. Potential directions include creative development and operation of community activity ecosystems and innovative exploration of community digital enablement.
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University Park Community, Bailu Urban Management Office, Kunshan High-tech Zone
Community Buliding
This project establishes a strategic partnership with the University Park Community, Bailu Urban Management Office, Kunshan, to recruit students as “Community Co-Creation Partners.” Students will leverage community venues and resources to design and implement creative initiatives that energize the community and foster integration among diverse groups, taking ownership of the entire process. The project emphasizes exploring long-term operational models and may involve community activity ecosystems, community governance, and digital innovation.
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Shaocun Community, Lujia Town, Kunshan City
Community Buliding
This project establishes a strategic partnership with Shaocun Community, Lujia Town, Kunshan City. The community aims to enhance public-space quality and create a distinctive themed block. Students will act as “curators,” developing tailored plans through aesthetic enhancement, art education, or collaborative volunteer models. Potential directions include community-space aesthetic enhancement, public-welfare art education curriculum development, and collaborative volunteer-based operations, with a strong focus on tangible implementation.
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