This Chemistry Division award supports a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site at the State University of New York Stony Brook for the summers of 2005-2007. The program director is Andreas Mayr who is assisted by co-PI Robert Kerber. The program will run for 10 weeks, from early June through mid-August of each year. Nine students will have an opportunity to work on well-defined research projects in major areas of chemistry, including biological chemistry, inorganic chemistry, materials chemistry, organic chemistry, organometallic chemistry, physical chemistry, polymer chemistry, and theoretical chemistry. As members of active research groups, the students will interact directly with their research advisors, learn from other group members, and use state-of-the-art facilities. They will acquire skills in design and conduct of experimental work and analysis of scientific data. The summer program concludes with a mini-symposium in which the REU participants, along with other summer research students, will present their results in front of an audience of their peers, faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral students. The program aims to give the students not only the best training in the laboratory, but also to nurture their awareness of what it means and takes to be a responsible and effective scientist. Thus a weekly workshop accompanies the program. In this workshop the students will receive safety training, discuss ethics in science issues, and receive instruction on how best to present their results to an audience. This program also includes a day-long visit to Brookhaven National Laboratory, where the students will encounter such big science facilities as the National Synchrotron Light Source. The program will target primarily students who would otherwise not have an opportunity to participate in cutting-edge research activities at their home institutions and/or are members of groups that are currently underrepresented in science careers.
