Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ will manage a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site program. The program, called Research Internships in Ocean Science (RIOS), will bring twelve undergraduates to Rutgers each summer for three years. RIOS is run at three sites, the main campus in New Brunswick, the Haskin Shellfish Research Lab and the Rutgers University Marine Field Station in Tuckerton, NJ. A total of thirty-six undergraduates will have a ten-week summer research experience that includes professional development activities and career mentoring. The internship support provides for student stipends, housing and travel to and from the program.
Interns who participate in RIOS have access to mentors drawn from an internationally recognized faculty, high caliber research facilities and multiple coastal sites. Through independent projects and team research experiences, students focus on process-oriented concepts and techniques applicable in any marine ecosystem. Group activities and independent research are embedded within ongoing programs, focused on the New Jersey continental shelf and adjacent estuaries, polar regions, and advanced ocean observing. Opportunities for student research include topics such as remote sensing, ocean observatories, autonomous vehicles, numerical modeling, and molecular biology. Students write research proposals, participate in research cruises, conduct laboratory and field research, analyze either existing data or data they generate, and communicate their work in various formats throughout the ten-week program. Finally, a poster designed for display at a national scientific meeting communicates their work with a summary of the hypotheses tested, approach taken, and new knowledge gained.
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.
