REU Site: Summer Research Projects in Contemporary Physics

This award funds the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site in the Physics Department at the University of Chicago. The site will support twelve students for ten weeks of summer research at the University of Chicago each year. The program's core for each student is a well-defined 10- week summer research project under the supervision of a University of Chicago faculty member.

The students will learn to communicate science by submitting a written report and making an oral presentation on their work.

In their applications, the students are asked about which areas of research they are most interested in pursuing. They are then placed with faculty mentors who work in those specialties. These areas include high-energy physics, cosmic-ray physics, astrophysics, general relativity, condensed-matter physics, non-linear dynamics, biophysics, fluid mechanics, and topological physics.

The program provides students with exposure to a broad set of topics across many areas of physics. This task is accomplished by a bi-weekly series of talks presented by faculty introducing some of the most important research topics currently pursued in the Department.

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.