In this project funded by the Division of Chemistry, the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) will host a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site with a focus on physical chemistry. The site leaders will bring 10 students to campus for 10 weeks each summer to conduct original research and participate in mini-courses, seminars, and organized social events. This REU Site will allow undergraduates who are recruited from other institutions to participate as a cohort in the Ole Miss Physical Chemistry Summer Research Program, which is an established summer program that has a demonstrated track record for fostering communication and collaboration between the members of the physical and computational chemistry research groups at Ole Miss. These students will perform original research in successful, funded, and collaborating research groups and take part in a summer-long schedule of organized academic and social activities with Ole Miss undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. This project will increase participation, especially from underrepresented groups and institutions without research opportunities, of students in chemistry research, graduate programs, and careers, as well as increase literacy in high performance computing and its applicability to chemistry.
Student participants perform original research in the laboratories of faculty members and also at the Mississippi Center for Supercomputing Research (MCSR). Twelve senior personnel will administer the program and these individuals will mentor students in original research, present lectures on physical chemistry-related topics, administer mini-courses, and organize social activities. Centered around experimental and theoretical physical chemistry, the research projects include synthetic design of light-harvesting, photoemissive, and catalytic materials, characterizing the photophysical properties of newly-developed materials, developing squeezed light lasers, the spectroscopic study and computational modeling of important biologically relevant interactions, and the computational modeling of newly-developed materials with important energy or drug development applications. Students in the program gain practical experience in the physical sciences while applying knowledge in chemistry to real world problems.
