User:Dbburkholder
Contents
About Me
My name is Dane Burkholder. I'm a freshman in the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University interested in studying biomedical engineering and economics. I am from Lone Tree, Colorado (a suburb south of Denver) and have lived in Colorado my whole life. Besides academics, I am passionate about soccer, tennis, and skiing. My favorite soccer team is Chelsea FC, which I am quite obsessed with. I also love the Denver Broncos and the Colorado Avalanche.
I pride myself in having a wide range of interests: I have played piano for ten years, enjoy learning about ancient Roman history, and participate in many outdoor activities such as hiking and mountain biking.
Goals for My Time at Duke
While at Duke, I hope to grow as an individual and figure out what I'd actually like to pursue as a career. My whole life up to this point has felt very automatic and obligatory, so I'm excited to finally branch out and discover my own path. Being successful and ambitious is important to me, and I am very driven and determined to make the most of my four years here.
Grand Challenges for Engineering Article
Reverse Engineering the Brain, Sally Adee, IEEE Spectrum, created 1 June 2008, accessed 8 September 2014 (Grand Challenge)
Favorite MATLAB Demonstration
My favorite MATLAB demonstration was the "Earth's Topography" demonstration for a couple reasons. I have always been interested in geography, cartography, and pretty much everything to do with visually depicting the world around me, so seeing a quantitative way to model Earth's topography appealed to this personal interest. Likewise, since we started learning about MATLAB, I've been curious about the real world application of it and whether or not people actually use this program everyday. This demonstration was a tangible use of MATLAB, which I thought was fascinating. Finally, the code wasn't too difficult to understand: it loaded data, plotted it first in 2D and then in 3D, then finally added color and light elements to create the final product, and I learned a little bit about the combination of all these elements through this demonstration.
