REU Site: A Summer Experience for Undergraduates Integrating Research, Education, and Career Development in an Interdisciplinary Environment

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This Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site award to the University of Kansas (KU), located in Lawrence, KS, supports the training of 10 students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2024-2026. In this program, funded by the Division of Chemistry, the students will participate in interdisciplinary research that focuses on bioanalytics, green chemistry and renewable energy. The intellectual hallmark of the program is the synergistic integration of research, professional development, and educational activities. Professional development activities include training in the responsible conduct of research and panel discussions that expose the participants to career paths available to Ph.D. chemists in industry, government, and/or academia. The program will serve the broader chemical sciences community by mentoring and training students from primarily undergraduate institutions across the nation having otherwise limited opportunities for research experience, and by encouraging participation of women and members of traditionally underrepresented groups in the sciences, including students with disabilities.Participants will select projects from six interdisciplinary research areas ranging from chemical biology, microfluidics and mass spectrometry to materials chemistry, energy and nanoscience to lasers, spectroscopy and molecular dynamics. Selected projects available to participants will include probing protein-antibody interactions, design of metal-binding molecules for use in nuclear waste remediation, study of metalloenzyme function using synthetic model compounds, exploring the role of catalyst structure in production of renewable fuels, and uncovering driving forces for chemical dynamics via computational methods. Students will benefit from the highly collaborative environment provided by the large KU chemical community, close interactions with faculty and graduate student (or postdoctoral) mentors, state-of-the-art facilities, and opportunities to communicate and disseminate their accomplishments in written and oral forms.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.