IRES: An American-Austrian Student Exchange for Chemistry Undergraduate Students

Syracuse University, Syracuse NY

Investigators

Abstract

The International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program provides an opportunity for US undergraduate students to have a foreign science and engineering research experience with the potential to build future international collaboration. With this award PI Karin Ruhlandt-Senge, and Co-PIs from Syracuse University, will collaborate with Frank Uhlig in the Institut fuer Anorganische Chemie at the Technische Universitaet Graz (TUG), in Graz Austria to create a reciprocal ten-week research exchange program involving American and Austrian undergraduate students in the field of chemistry. This program seeks to address the need for American science undergraduate students to have an international experience without detriment to their required academic science curriculum. Offered over the summer months, the grant outlined allows American chemistry students to be involved in intense, meaningful chemistry research in world-class facilities, while participating in a different culture in an international setting. US students will be recruited nationwide for this program. Syracuse University will provide funds for two of its own students who are either from an underrepresented community, or are first-generation college students, to participate in the program. Students will work on different research topics from the wide range of research opportunities in the chemistry department of TUG. The experience of conducting original research in a different cultural environment will allow this group of American students to enter the workforce better prepared to operate and to lead in a global research community.