REU Site: Exploring 21st Century Careers in the Biological Sciences: A Comparative Regenerative Biology Approach

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This REU Site award to Mount Desert Island (MDI) Biological Laboratory, located in Salisbury Cove, ME, will support the training of 10 undergraduate students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2019- 2021. Students will explore topics related to regenerative biology and aging using a variety of animal models, including zebrafish, salamanders, and nematodes. Students will contribute to the understanding of how limbs and organs regenerate under varying environmental conditions. Additional opportunities for students include learning about career options and deeper scientific concepts thru scheduled seminars, symposia, and workshops. To experience the entrepreneurial facet of scientific research, all students will participate in an entrepreneurship workshop in which they will learn about career avenues for scientists whose research interests span disciplinary boundaries. In addition, all students will attend a bioinformatics workshop in which they will learn how to work with big data sets as well as career paths in the evolving field of computational biology. It is anticipated that a total of 30 students, primarily from schools with limited research opportunities, will be trained in the program. Students will learn how research is conducted and how to communicate their research findings through participation in a weekly science communication course and an on-campus Summer Science Symposium at the culmination of their REU experience. It is possible that students will present their results in other scientific venues and contribute to scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals. 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. In addition, students will participate in a campus-wide survey to determine how to improve the summer research experience for future students at MDI Biological Laboratory. 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 https://mdibl.org/education/hs-undergrad/undergraduate-applications/reu/ or by contacting the PI (Dr. Jane Disney at jdisney@mdibl.org) or the co-PI (Dr. Dustin Updike at dupdike@mdibl.org).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.