This award supports the renewal of an REU site in he Department of Physics at the University of California, San Diego. The primary goal of the program is to offer research opportunities to students at smaller universities, and also campuses with a large body of talented students from groups currently underrepresented in graduate education. Student projects will include experimental, theoretical, and computational research in high energy physics, condensed matter physics, biophysics, plasma physics, astrophysics and nonlinear physics. State-of-the-art experimental and computational facilities will be available to all participants. Students will participate in an individual research project supervised by a Physics Department faculty member. Students will be integrated into the research groups of their supervisors, giving them a first hand view of research in an academic setting. In this fashion, the program will create a dynamic and stimulating environment for undergraduate students exposing them to cutting-edge esearch across disciplines. For all the students, but particularly for students from smaller schools with little or no local research efforts this may be their only chance to see how different research is from classroom physics. On arriving, students will work with their faculty advisors to prepare and present a proposed project. At the end of the summer, they will write a final research report and give a presentation at a campus wide Undergraduate Summer Research. The REU program includes seminars by physics faculty, laboratory tours, seminars/workshops on computer usage, laboratory safety and library research, and joint scientific seminars and meetings with the groups from other departments. Participants will be offered a mini-course on scientific integrity.
