REU Site: Physics/JILA

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This award supports the renewal of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site at the University of Colorado/JILA. The site will support eight students per year for ten weeks of summer research. The intellectual focus of this REU program is physics, and undergraduate students are paired up with preeminent faculty to do cutting-edge research in many fields of physics, including atomic, molecular, and optical physics, biophysics, condensed matter physics, high energy physics, nuclear physics, plasma physics, quantum physics, quantum information science, and physics education research. While the main emphasis of the summer is centered on each student's individual research lab, where the students are expected to master at least a part of a large task, a variety of other activities take place during the program. These include ethics, electronics, and machining classes, a program on "Getting Into Grad School," as well as lab tours and a weekly science seminar series aimed at the students. The program culminates with a day of presentations given by each of the REU students. Special efforts are made to include significant participation levels from women and minorities, as well as from students coming from smaller institutions that do not have as many research opportunities. This program fits in with the NSF goal of developing a diverse and internationally competitive scientific and engineering workforce. Active research experience is one of the most effective ways to attract talented undergraduates and retain them in careers in science and engineering.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.