BIL Hosts Workshop at PALS 2026 and Presents at Duke’s Pre-College BME Course

Last week, the Duke BIG IDEAs Lab had an incredible opportunity to engage with the next generation of innovators through two exciting outreach events!

At the 2026 Peace Ambassador Leadership Summit (PALS) through National Voices for Equality Education and Enlightenment (NVEEE), our Community Engagement Team – Kaileigh Moertl, Lauren Lederer, Hayoung Jeong, Yihang Jiang, and Annika Kumar – led our “Collect and Build Your Own Digital Biomarkers” workshop with approximately 20 high school students from across the U.S. and around the world.

Participants explored how wearable technology transforms raw physiological signals, such as heart rate and movement, into digital biomarkers that provide meaningful insights into health and clinical outcomes like cardiovascular fitness and physical activity. Through a hands-on experience, students learned about our lab’s end-to-end process of collecting real-time sensor data, processing it, and translating it into actionable health information. It was inspiring to see so much curiosity, thoughtful discussion, and enthusiasm for biomedical engineering and digital health.

On the same day, Lauren Lederer and Stephanie Sullivan introduced the BIG IDEAs Lab to students in the Duke Pre-College Biomedical Engineering course, sharing how our interdisciplinary research combines engineering, data science, and clinical collaboration to advance wearable technologies and improve human health.

A huge thank you to the organizers of PALS and Duke Pre-College for the opportunity to connect with such talented and motivated students. We’re excited to see where their curiosity and leadership take them next!

#DigitalHealth #Wearables #BiomedicalEngineering #STEMOutreach #CommunityEngagement #DigitalBiomarkers #HealthInnovation #DukeEngineering #FutureScientists Duke BME Duke University Center for Computational and Digital Health Innovation