REU Site: Natural History Research Experiences

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The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), located in Washington, D.C. will host a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site during the summers from 2016-2020. The REU program will support 16 students each summer for 10 weeks, during which students will conduct independent research and participate in a variety of professional development workshops. Students will be housed in dorms on the George Washington University campus which is a short walking distance to the museum. Projects focus on the NMNH's research strengths in geology, biology, and in anthropology. Students are given unparalleled access to the collections, facilities, and intellectual resources of NMNH while they develop a research project in close collaboration with a museum research scientist. The program is designed to support and prepare participants for entry into scientific careers by providing structured council on entering graduate school, designing, conducting and publishing research, and presenting results to the scientific community and the public. NMNH is committed to broadening participation and enhancing diversity in natural history disciplines in order to develop an internationally competitive scientific work force for the future. In addition, the REU students will themselves serve as role models for the museum's "Youth Engagement in Science!" program for minority high school students from the DC-Baltimore area, and they will directly engage the museum-going public about their research - interacting with thousands of museum visitors annually.This program will support a total of 80 students over a five year period while they conduct an independent research project and participate in a variety of professional develop workshops. Students will be provided with housing, a stipend and travel expenses to attend the program. They will also be encouraged to publish results of their research and to participate in scientific conferences after the program is over. While these experiences will provide students with technical skills and pathways into science careers, the training will also encourage the development of critical thinking and presentation skills that will be valuable in any future career. Students will have a wide range of potential research mentors and research topics. Within the geosciences, scientists in the Department of Mineral Sciences focus on the origin and evolution of the Earth and Solar System with emphasis on the differentiation and chemical evolution of rocky planets and asteroids, volcanic processes and hazards, environmental/soil mineralogy, and early solar system processes. Approaches range from microanalysis of rocks, minerals, and meteorites, to experimental petrology and volcanology, to space mission-based science. Members of the Department of Paleobiology explore the dynamics of life on Earth including the history of climatic, oceanographic and environmental change, the origin and extinction of taxa, and large-scale evolutionary patterns and processes. Scientists in the four biological science departments focus on the discovery of Earth's biodiversity, and on understanding its evolutionary history. Approaches used range from traditional morphology and taxonomy to the latest in genomics and next-generationsequencing. Scholars in anthropology span the sub-disciplines of archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, and forensic, biological and physical anthropology of humans and their relatives.