REU Site Biological Discovery in Woods Hole

This REU Site award to the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole will support the training of 10 students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2025- 2027. It is anticipated that a total of 30 students who are early in their undergraduate career and primarily from schools with limited research opportunities or from an under-represented group will be trained in the program.

The program has a strong history of preparing students for advanced degrees in the biological sciences, with approximately 70% of our graduates pursuing Masters and/or PhD degrees in life sciences. Students will be fully immersed in their research mentor’s laboratory to learn how research is conducted, and many will present the results of their work at scientific conferences.

Assessment of this program will be done through an online tool. Students should apply to the REU site using NSF ETAP (Education and Training Application: https://etap.nsf.gov).

The Biological Discovery in Woods Hole program provides a rich undergraduate research experience with a focus on daily, hands-on, independent experimentation in the mentor's laboratory. The program focuses on the neurobiological and/or cellular processes that regulate physiological systems and/or mediate organismal behavior. To augment the research experience, students participate in weekly course meetings, field trips, seminars, and luncheons that explore a wide range of topics (graduate school application to ethics) to encourage the students to prepare and pursue a career in the biological sciences.

Students will present research posters during the MBL undergraduate research symposium at the end of the summer. Applications will be made through the NSF ETAP portal beginning in December of each year and will be reviewed by the admissions committee, with decisions made in early spring. Recent undergraduate projects have included lamprey nerve regeneration, how glial cells influence nerve regeneration, heat stress on corals, RNA editing in squid, anthropogenic sound on marine organisms, ion regulation in nudibranch gills, embryonic development in skates and cephalopod camouflage.

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.