REU Site: Molecular and Synthetic Microbiology

University Of Georgia Research Foundation Inc, Athens GA

Investigators

Abstract

This REU Site award to the University of Georgia, located in Athens, Georgia, will support the training of 10 students for 9 weeks during the summers of 2018-2020. This program will introduce undergraduates to areas of microbial research and increase their awareness of careers in microbiology and graduate school application process through multiple workshops. Students from groups that are underrepresented in the scientific community, including deaf and hard-of-hearing students and ethnic minorities, are encouraged to participate. Each REU participant conducts an independent project with a faculty mentor residing in one of several Departments (e.g., Microbiology, Marine Sciences). All provide research topics that address the functions of microscopic organisms and use interdisciplinary techniques that combine knowledge from diverse fields, including Genetics, Biochemistry, and Bioinformatics. Projects may address broad questions including the role of microbes in environmental or geochemical processes, or in engineering microbes to synthesize industrially-relevant compounds. These processes may be dissected at the molecular or genome sequence levels. Student applications are submitted electronically, and students will be selected by a committee of research faculty. It is anticipated that a total of 30 students, primarily from schools with limited research opportunities, will be trained in the program. Additional support will be provided to deaf or hard-of-hearing (D/HH) participants. Students will learn how research is conducted, and many will present the results of their work at scientific conferences. Participants will meet with faculty, attend scientific seminars, tour local biotech industries, participate in discussions of science ethics, and join regular laboratory group meetings. Students will present their research results at the end of the summer in a poster session. A common web-based assessment tool used by all REU Site programs funded by the Division of Biological Infrastructure will be used to determine the effectiveness of the training program. Students will be tracked after the program to determine their career paths. Students will be asked to respond to an automatic email sent via the NSF reporting system. More information is available by visiting http://mib.uga.edu/reu-site-molecular-and-synthetic-microbiology, or by contacting the PI (Dr. Vincent J. Starai at vjstarai@uga.edu) or the co-PI (Dr. Timothy Hoover at trhoover@uga.edu). 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.