REU Site in Physics at Rensselaer

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).This award continues support for the REU site at the Physics Department of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. This Site aims to actively involve 8 undergraduates each summer for next four years in a 10-week program. REU students will work with experienced faculty mentors and participate in ongoing frontier physics research in various physics subfields, such as Condensed Matter, Optical Physics, Terahertz Science, Particle Physics, and Astrophysics. The program features hands-on projects carefully designed to give students the opportunity to make discoveries that can result in publications. Students will conduct experiments using existing facilities, build simple instruments and interfaces, programs for data acquisition, or use computer modeling and perform data analysis. The REU participants will have ample opportunities to interact and network among themselves as well as with faculty mentors, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students on a daily basis. In addition, there are weekly group activities such as technical seminars and field trips to Industrial Research Center and other research laboratories, exercises on ethics and development of leadership skills. Students receive training and practice of oral and written technical communication skills by presenting their research results. The REU program helps prepare and train undergraduate students including those from underrepresented groups for careers in science related areas. This project is funded by the Division of Materials Research in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate of National Science Foundation.