REU Site: Biological Inquiry: From Molecules to Organisms

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This REU Site award to Northeastern University, located in Boston, MA, will support the training of 10 students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2015-2017. The REU program is open to all undergraduate students who are citizens, nationals, or permanent residents of the United States. Students from underrepresented groups, from schools with limited opportunities for research, and with military backgrounds including cadets, reservists, and returning veterans, are encouraged to apply. The focus of the REU site is interdisciplinary research across biological levels. Pairs of participating students will work in interdisciplinary research teams and explore related research questions from different perspectives. Example projects include extracellular matrix-guided differentiation of adult stem cells, microbial biofilm assembly and DNA damage response, behavioral and molecular aspects of social immunity, organismal survival under extreme conditions, links between circadian rhythms and regeneration, and mitochondrial DNA inheritance in developing oocytes. Students will participate in joint workshops on ethics and responsible conduct of research, proposal writing, presentation of talks and posters, applying to graduate school, and career opportunities in science. At the end of the program, students will present their research in a summer research symposium. Students will be housed in new dorms on campus in the heart of Boston. The effectiveness of the training program will be assessed with a common web-based tool used by all REU programs funded by the Division of Biological Infrastructure (Directorate for Biological Sciences). It is anticipated that a total of 30 students, primarily from schools with limited research opportunities, will be trained. Students will learn how research is conducted, and many will present the results of their work at scientific conferences. Students will use techniques at the cutting edge of biological research to answer new questions, and will enhance their abilities to lead and perform in research teams. Students are required to be tracked after the program and must respond to an automatic email sent via the NSF reporting system. More information is available by visiting http://www.northeastern.edu/cos/biology/undergraduate/reu-site/, or by contacting the PI (Dr. Wendy Smith at w.smith@neu.edu) or the co-PI (Dr. Rebeca Rosengaus at r.rosengaus@neu.edu).