REU Site: Next generation Evolutionary Biology

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This REU Site award to Ohio State University, located in Columbus, OH, will support the training of 10 students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2017- 2019. This program will recruit rising sophomores and juniors to collaborate with research mentors from the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology to address questions about evolutionary relationships among plants, microbes, or animals using leading-edge molecular biology and informatics techniques for massively parallel DNA sequence data. In addition to developing skills in research project design, data collection, and analysis, this program will focus on professional development of the students, including meetings with biologists in industry, natural resource management, and the Columbus Zoo. Students will be recruited through websites, recruitment visits to undergraduate student groups, and social media. Matching between students and potential mentors will be done by a selection committee including the PIs and a subset of potential mentors who will consider the student's research interests and professional goals. It is anticipated that a total of 30 students, primarily from schools with limited research opportunities, will be trained in the program. Students from diverse backgrounds will be recruited from institutions within OSU's Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and from OSU regional campuses in rural Ohio. Because the target population is rising sophomores and juniors, the REU program includes extensive career exploration and professional development, with the expectation that these will increase significantly the impact for students as they navigate subsequent academic and professional opportunities. Students will learn how research is conducted, and many will present the results of their work at scientific conferences.A common web-based assessment tool used by all REU programs funded by the Division of Biological Infrastructure (Directorate for Biological Sciences) will be used to determine the effectiveness of the training program. Students will be tracked after the program in order to determine their career paths. Students will be asked to respond to an automatic email sent via the NSF reporting system. More information about the program is available by visiting http://eeob.osu.edu/NextGenREU, or by contacting the PI (Dr. Marymegan Daly at daly.66@osu.edu) or the co-PI (Dr. Bryan Carstens at carstens.12@osu.edu).