REU Site: Summer Fellowships in Biogeochemistry and Climate Change at the University of California, Irvine

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This REU site program will enable eight undergraduate students to conduct scientific research in conjunction with a faculty member in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. The program theme is biogeochemical cycling and climate change, with most research projects involving studies of air-sea or air-land interactions in the context of a changing climate. The diverse research interests within the department in conjunction with the facilities available will offer a unique research experience for undergraduate fellows, including world class modeling facilities, an accelerator mass spectrometer facility, and state of the art chemistry laboratories used for studying aspects of ice core gas samples, atmospheric, terrestrial, and oceanic chemistry. Student research projects may involve fieldwork, laboratory studies, computer simulations, analysis of satellite remote sensing data, or combinations of several of these techniques and approaches.In addition to individual research projects, group activities will expose students to the wide variety of ongoing research within Earth System Science, through a series of Research Snapshot lectures, informal discussions with department faculty and graduate students, and Reading Group analysis of key papers in the field. Broad-ranging lectures will present an overview of the Earth's physical climate and biogeochemical cycles, and give students an understanding of the emerging field of Earth system science. It is anticipated that students in the program will learn about the diverse research tools and techniques being applied to study the Earth system, gain valuable research experience in one of the subfields of Earth system science, and become intellectually stimulated to pursue a career in this field.The broader impacts of this program will be the entrainment of the next generation of scientists into careers involving scientific research, including students from underrepresented groups, and students from other regional schools where research opportunities are more limited.