REU Site: Ole Miss Physical Chemistry Summer Research Program

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This award from the Division of Chemistry (CHE) and the EPSCoR Office at the National Science Foundation supports the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site at the University of Mississippi. The site leaders will bring 10 students to campus for 10 weeks each summer to conduct research in the area of Physical Chemistry. This REU Site will allow undergraduates who are recruited from other institutions to participate in the Ole Miss Physical Chemistry Summer Research Program, which is an established summer program that has a demonstrated track record for fostering communication and collaboration between the members of the physical and computational chemistry research groups at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). These students will perform original research in successful, funded, and collaborating research groups. They will also take part in a summer-long schedule of organized academic and social activities with Ole Miss undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. This natural expansion of an established summer program will allow additional students to take advantage of a developed program, while at the same time supporting multiple NSF-funded research groups with undergraduate research students in a collaborative environment. Undergraduate student participants in the REU program will have the opportunity to perform original research in the laboratories of six faculty members and at the Mississippi Center for Supercomputing Research (MCSR). Many of the projects outlined are collaborative, with mentoring by multiple senior personnel who will provide research experiences in many different areas. Centered on experimental and theoretical physical chemistry, the research projects include synthetic design of novel emissive materials, determining the photophysical properties of newly-developed materials, the spectroscopic study and computational modeling of important biologically relevant interactions, and computational modeling of newly-developed materials with energy or drug development applications. Recruitment of students from schools with large numbers of underrepresented groups is planned, with contacts having been made at Rust College, Alcorn State University, Mississippi Valley State University, and Tougaloo College, all are traditionally Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). In addition, students will be recruited from Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) such as Millsaps College, Mississippi University for Women, Belhaven College, and Mississippi College.