N S F - R E U
Welcome to our program!
Our summer bridge program for Pima Community College students provides research opportunities with distinguished Univeristy of Arizona faculty in fundamental and applied sciences. For twenty years, the National Science Foundation has generously supported underrepresented and nontraditional students, and for twenty years these students have proven themselves talented and driven enough to succeed in scientific research. They have contributed their efforts to fields as diverse as atmospheric sciences, astronomy, geosciences, optical sciences, applied mathematics, solar engineering, civil engineering, analytical chemistry, spectroscopy, experimental high energy physics, robotics, hydrology, simulation science, biophysics, early childhood language acquisition, radiocarbon dating, electronics, planetary studies, etc.
Our diverse students' backgrounds have provided them with unshakable determination and keen entrepreneurship making them invaluable resources to their labs. Many are hired by their labs to continue their research, and others participate in the NASA Space Grant research program. Nearly all finish college and several have continued their educations to receive PhD's.
Our program targets high achieving but possibly at-risk local community college students who plan to transfer to UA to finish their undergraduate degree. During the first two weeks, participants receive intensive pre-research training in machine shop skills (lathe, mill, etc.), programming (C, MatLab, etc.) and electronics (logic circuits, oscilloscopes, etc.). Visits are made to each of the participating labs so students can select research mentors whose interests are most closely aligned with their own. Participants also participate in a team-building activity designing PVC-catapults. These catapults are launched during the REU Reunion Cookout where current participants interact with previous participants to obtain useful advice and information. At the end of these two weeks, students are placed in the research labs and begin their projects.
During the remaining eight weeks, many social activities are organized to keep participants connected to one another. Participants also meet most Friday mornings to discuss and present their research. These meetings are designed to build participants' comfort levels at presenting their research in a progressive manner:
In The News:
We have served hundreds of students with the generous support of National Science Foundation grants:
2009-2011 2006-2008 2003-2005 2000-2002 1997-1999 1994-1996 1993
Machine Shop Instruction:
Solar Energy Club Sponsor/Mentor:
Dr. Roger Haar
Graduate Mentor Emeritus:
Dr. Anthony Lewis and
Matt Bunting (REU participant 2006 & 2007) researching
at the Robotics & Neural Systems Lab.
· 2011: Ahmed Alani - Programming GUI interfaces to enable remote access and data collection from novel 'Cheetah' robots.
Dr. Roger Angel and Matt Rademacher researching astronomy & solar energy at Steward Observatory.
· 2011: Nic Smith - A kinematic mount for ARGOS, Advanced Rayleigh Ground Layer Adaptive Optics System.
· 2012: Brian Bellah
· 2013: Kyle Egan
· 2013: Jose Garcia
· 2014: Kyle Wetmore
· 2014: Brett Tolley
Dr. Rene Corrales and Dr. Krishna Muralidharan researching computational space chemistry & material science.
· 2011: Al Weber - Water Formation in Minerals from Proton Implantation.
Dr. Bonner Denton and Scott Tilden researching spectroscopy & electronics related to analytical chemistry technology development.
· 2011: Layne Castro - The new age of detecting explosives: Ion Mobility Spectrometry.
· 2011: Dan Allen - Designing and constructing a Beowulf cluster and circuit board fabrication techniques.
· 2012: John Mothershed
· 2012: Daryn Roan
· 2013: Adam Williams
· 2013: Tamara Alani
· 2014: Tyler Fenimore
· 2014: Eliza Dawson
Dr. Eric Betterton and Kyle Rine (REU participant 2009) researching atmospheric chemical analysis].
· 2011: Mackenzie Russell - Air quality near mining operations: As, Cd and Pb contaminates from Hayden Smelter and the Iron King superfund.
· 2012: Alina Kalinina - Aerosol Contaminants from Mining Operations
· 2013: Christopher Jabczynski
· 2013: Chad Smith
· 2014: Mary Jones
Alex Leonard and George Burr researching chemical analysis at the Accelerator Mass Spectrometer Lab.
· 2011: Caitlin Schnitzer - Radioactive carbon-14 dating of meteorites, lunar rocks, and carbon dioxide samples.
· 2012: Jamie Fitzgerald
· 2014: Marc Wilson
Dr. Bob Arnold researching chemical & environmental engineering.
· 2011: Stephanie Ruehl - Real time sensor observation of an advanced oxidation process.
· 2012: Andrew Keller - Wastewater treatment
· 2014: James McHugh
Dr. Cholik Chan researching Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering.
· 2011: Frank Peebles - Lab on a Chip project: blood flow as a Newtonian fluid.
· 2011: Bishop Duperret - Chebyshev polynomial spectral method numerical analysis with MatLab for microfluidic biomedical analysis.
· 2012: Daniel Simmons
· 2013: David Malboeuf
· 2014: Jesus Villezcas
Dr. Stephen Kukolich researching microwave spectroscopy chemistry, see research summary.
· 2011: E'bluciana Booker - The search for periodic trends in the periodic table: relating the structure of molecules to transitional frequencies.
Dr. Mary Alt researching computational speech & hearing.
· 2011: Carmen Austin - ActionScript programming for game-based evaluation of juvenile word learning.
· 2012: Cynthia Quinones - Lexicon Literacy Language Learning.
Dr. Ted Trouard researching MRI biomechanical engineering.
· 2011: Josh Clements - The MRI laboratory study of opening up the blood brain barrier using the BOMUS experiment.
· 2013: Amanda Halawani
· 2014: Clarissa Celaya
Dr. Ken Johns and Joel Steinberg researching electronics related to particle physics.
· 2011: Steve Broussard - Electronics for particle physics at the large hadron collider.
· 2012: Gina Moraila - Improving redshifts to study Dark Matter
· 2014: Evelyn Hunten
Dr. Brian LeRoy researching graphene.
· 2012: Jon Weiser - Spectroscopic Analysis of Rotational Angles in Bilayer Graphene Nucleation .
· 2014: Devin McKenzie
Dr. Kaushik Balakrishnan researching nanostructures.
· 2012: Eddie Enhelder
Dr. Michael Brown researching nuclear magnetic resonance.
· 2012: EJ Matchin - NMR
Dr. Weigang Wang researching spintronics.
· 2013: Marcus Rosales
· 2014: Colin Figgins
Dr. Weigang Wang researching 3D printing.
· 2013: Salomon Soumbey-Alley
Dr. Charles Wolgemuth researching biophysics of cells.
· 2013: Liliana Saldana