This award supports the renewal of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates site in Physics at the University of Chicago. The award supports eight undergraduate students for ten weeks of summer research in topics including high-energy physics, cosmic-ray and astrophysics, general relativity, condensed-matter physics, nonlinear dynamics, and biophysics. The students will conduct leading-edge physics research while developing strong peer relationships with their cohort of diverse physics students. Regular work on the research project is augmented with formal presentations from faculty members on their research, and with field trips to both Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. The interns will learn to communicate science by submitting a written report and making an oral presentation on their work. The program provides students with exposure to the breadth and unity of physics and brings the REU students into contact with one another. This creates the peer interactions among students that increase the program?s excitement and vitality. excitement and vitality.
The Department of Physics at the University of Chicago has run a Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) site targeted especially towards giving women and underrepresented minorities an opportunity to participate in research. The objective is to encourage these students to pursue careers in physics. Applications are solicited nationally with an emphasis on historically black colleges, minority-serving institutions and traditional women's colleges. The core of the program for each student is a well-defined ten-week summer research project under the supervision of a University of Chicago faculty member. Projects are distributed among a number of different areas in physics: high-energy physics, astrophysics and the study of cosmic rays, general relativity, condensed-matter physics, non-linear dynamics and biophysics. A series of lectures presented twice per week by University of Chicago faculty provides an overview of some of the most important research topics currently pursued in these areas of physics and provides students with exposure to the depth and unity of physics. At the end of the program, in addition to writing a short research report on their work, each student gives a presentation describing the research that they did in the laboratory. During the summer, the interns are given tours of the two close-by national laboratories that are managed by the University: Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Some examples that show the breadth in subject matter of the research projects in which the REU interns have participated are: James Allen (supervised by Young-Kee Kim): Improving Bottom Quark Identification at the Collider Detector at Fermilab ; Diandian Chen (supervised by Cheng Chin): Faraday Rotation from Graphene; Felicity Hills (supervised by Prof. Steve Meyer): Characterization of MPS Wall Motion in the Fermilab Holometer; and Milo Tayor (supervised by Mike Gladders): Modeling Galaxy Clusters as Gravitational Lenses. We have made great progress in meeting our fundamental objectives. We have introduced a very large number of minority and women students to research in physics. Out of a total of 11 students directly supported by this award, 8 students are minorities, underrepresented in science (4 African American, 4 Hispanic) and 3 are female. Based on our past experience, we estimate that the majority of these individuals intend to apply to graduate school at the completion of their undergraduate program. Also we expect that many of our REU interns will continue in scientific careers and do exceedingly well in obtaining national fellowships. One student directly supported under a previous award received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, while another received an Honorable Mention in the same competition.
