This award supports the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Cornell University. The program aims to provide undergraduate students from across the country with the opportunity to engage actively in research covering a broad swath of the science frontier from the Solar System to the extreme environments surrounding black holes to the distant reaches and earliest moments of the universe. Students will work with individual faculty on a focused research project. In addition, they will also participate in a series of lectures and workshops designed particularly to expose them to a range of research topics, techniques and forefront facilities as well as the processes by which major facilities and missions are designed, constructed and operated. While primary mentoring responsibility will lie with the faculty, interactions within research groups will provide contact with more junior professionals such as graduate students and postdoctoral students as well as engineers and technical staff.
Students will have access to local resources and facilities and will learn how to access and use public databases and software tools. Organized activities on our residential rural campus, sometimes in coordination with other undergraduate research programs within our university, will offer the opportunity to expose the students to broader science areas and to stimulate understanding of the nature, methodology and ethics of scientific research on a scale larger than our own program. The program will encourage mentors to take students on observing trips, to assist with development of publications and other presentations, and to send them to professional meetings. Students will also participate in several activities designed to address issues related to graduate school and science as a career. Students will be selected on merit, but the program will aim to recruit diverse student cohorts including students from underrepresented groups and from colleges and universities with limited research infrastructure.
