REU: Collaborative Cross-Disciplinary Research in Biology

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

9322186 Kunz This award provides funds to continue a successful REU SITE at Boston University. Five cross-disciplinary, team-oriented projects will provide each group of two students with opportunities to work closely with two experienced faculty mentors on a collaborative project. The emphasis on this REU Site project is to promote collaborative research among students and research biologists whose disciplines have traditionally focused on different sub-disciplines. Collaborative research topics include: expression of bacterial proteins, mechanisms of gene induction in retinal cells, hormonal responses to stress in bats, kinship and population processes in voles, and termite foraging ecology and wood chemistry. Faculty mentors have been carefully selected on the basis of their experience with undergraduates in the classroom, research contacts with undergraduates, and their own scholarly contributions. Five students will be selected from regional, four-year colleges that do not provide significant opportunities for research and five will be selected from students attending Boston University. Recruitment efforts will specifically target minority, women, and physically-challenged students. Selection procedures will be based on scholarly aptitude, research potential, and previous experience. An ethics component with weekly seminars on topics such as ethical treatment of animals, record keeping and data management, values and integrity in science, responsibility of authorship, and reporting and investigating allegations of misconduct. This ethics component will be shared with REU students from Wellesley College and the University of Massachusetts (Boston Campus), and joint seminars, activities, and field trips have been planned in collaboration with REU programs at these regional institutions. ***