REU Site: Plant Genome Research

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An award has been made to the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) and Cornell University to continue a Research Experience for Undergraduates Sites (REU) program, which has been running every summer since 2005. This REU program will provide plant molecular biology research experience to twelve undergraduate students for ten weeks each year, for the summers of 2011-2013. The program seeks to attract undergraduate students from minority-serving institutions and small colleges where scientific research opportunities are less readily available. Students who are interested in research careers and have not yet completed their undergraduate degrees will join scientists on the Cornell University campus to conduct cutting-edge research in plant molecular biology, genetics, and biochemistry. Typical student research projects will involve gene cloning and characterization, functional genomics, expression of foreign genes in plants, analysis of plant metabolites, or bioinformatics. The student research experience will be enriched by scientific ethics training, weekly faculty research lectures, discussion of graduate school and career options, tours of BTI and Cornell research facilities, and a field day at local research farms. Students will develop skills in scientific communication by writing and critiquing research proposals at the beginning of the program, as well as by presenting their results in the form of a seminar at the end. The impact of summer research training will be assessed through evaluations at the beginning and end of the program. Less formal discussions with the students and their mentors in the course of the summer will be used to monitor their progress. In addition, students will evaluate the program utilizing an REU common assessment tool. More information can be obtained from the program website (www.bti.cornell.edu/pgrp), as well as by contacting the program coordinator (Tiffany Fleming, pgrp-ourtreach@cornell.edu, 607-254-6732), the PI (Georg Jander, jander@cornell.edu), or the Co-PI (Jian Hua, jh299@cornell.edu).