REU Site: Undergraduate Research in Computational Biology at Mississippi State University

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This REU Site award to Mississippi State University, in Starkville, MS, will support the training of 10 students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2017- 2019. Students will be involved in interdisciplinary research projects in computational biology, working closely with their faculty mentors from Computer Science and Engineering, Biological Sciences and Veterinary Medicine. Projects will be available in the areas of genome analysis, metagenomics, scientific visualization, and bioinformatics algorithms, among others. Professional development sessions will be conducted to train students in the basics of computational biology and to provide information on graduate school and other STEM careers. All students will receive training in ethics and the responsible conduct of research. Recruitment will take place at institutions in Mississippi and the surrounding region, and the program will be open to students nationwide. Highly qualified students will be selected by a committee of faculty mentors based primarily upon their academic background, skills, and interests. It is anticipated that a total of 30 students, primarily from schools with limited research opportunities, will be trained in the program. An emphasis will be placed upon broadening participation by providing research experiences to students from groups underrepresented in science and computing. 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 Site programs funded by the Division of Biological Infrastructure, 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://www.cse.msstate.edu/~compbio, or by contacting the PI (Dr. Andy Perkins at perkins@cse.msstate.edu). This grant is supported by the Division of Biological Infrastructure in the Directorate for Biosciences (BIO) and the Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).