REU Site: Experimental and Computational Modeling of Materials and Biomolecular Systems

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).This Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site award to the University of Utah, located at Salt Lake City, UT, continues a training program for 9 students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2022-2024. In this program, participants will pursue cutting-edge research projects under the guidance of experienced and committed mentors, addressing a range of challenging chemistry-related problems in energy, health, environment, and education. Participants will also take part in professional development activities to enhance skills in data analysis and computation, develop scientific communication skills, and prepare for graduate schools and modern STEM careers. By providing research experiences enriched by cohort building, mentor training, workshops, a graduate school mini expo, and a research conference, this site will broaden participation in STEM and strengthen ties between the University of Utah and other local schools.Participants will advance research projects with an emphasis on model building, data analysis, and computation from all areas of chemistry. These projects include crystal structure prediction based on solution species; discovering chemical ligands of bacterial sensory domains; modeling the hydrothermal synthesis of zeolites; and studies of nitrogenase activity by electrochemistry and simulation. To support the data analysis and modeling aspects of their projects, students will participate in a series of summer workshops run by the Center for High Performance Computing. To increase diversity in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) pipeline, this REU site will endeavor to recruit students from underrepresented groups at local community colleges and primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) from around the nation.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.