REU Site: Research Experience in Optical-Infrared Astronomy at NOIRLab in Chile

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This project will support six undergraduate students per year for a 10 week research experience at NSF facilities at La Serena in Chile. The students will carry out meaningful research projects under the expert supervision of NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) large and diverse scientific staff. The students will have first-hand experience with NOIRLab's state-of-the-art telescopes and instrumentation at the site. Participants will also engage in cultural activities involving field trips and interactions with their Chilean counterparts from the Practice en Investigation en Astronomia (PIA) program, which offers research experiences for Chilean students. The students will be recruited broadly, from across the US and Puerto Rico, and from institutions that are diverse in size and type, especially those that do not commonly offer research experiences.The student projects will primarily make use of science-ready data products and involve topics and techniques at the forefront of astrophysics, including Galactic structure, star clusters and dwarf galaxies, star formation, the interstellar medium, time domain, and large data sets. The students will receive professional development training provided by the staff at NOIRLab in La Serena. This training will include professional ethics, presentation of scientific work, opportunities and career paths (both in and out of academia), and strategies for successful job interviews.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.