This award supports a new Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers. Undergraduate students will spend ten weeks doing forefront research in astronomy, high-energy/nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics. The students will also engage in a program of professional development activities that educate them about the conduct of research and the prospects for careers in physics and astronomy, and that give them the tools for applying to, gaining admission to, and succeeding in graduate school as the first step towards those careers. In a mixture of formal and informal settings, the students will benefit from interacting with each other, with Rutgers undergraduate physics and astronomy majors, with assigned graduate student "near-peer mentors", and with a diverse peer group from outside Rutgers working in completely different scientific fields. The faculty mentors involved in this project(including five APS Fellows and four NSF CAREER award winners) are an enthusiastic, collegial, intellectually diverse, and award-winning set of scientist-educators with exciting research programs and excellent records of working with undergraduates.
