Undergraduate Research
The IGERT program invites undergraduate applicants for eight IGERT
undergraduate fellowships each year. The fellowships will support a
part of the undergraduate summer stipend between junior and senior
classes. IGERT Undergraduate Fellows will research during a 12-week
summer internship in the IGERT research laboratories (IGERT UG Research
Program Directors: Drs. Troy Shinbrot and Rick Riman). IGERT fellows
will directly mentor admitted undergraduate interns, with oversight by
the associated IGERT faculty. The goals of this program is to introduce
undergraduates to inter-disciplinary research in biointerfacial science
and engineering, to provide valuable mentoring experiences for IGERT
graduate fellows and to recruit these experienced students into the
graduate program.
The recruited UGs will be assigned to research projects with the IGERT
graduate trainees. During their first week in the program, the interns
will be exposed to facilities at two relevant Centers of Research
Excellence, which will acquaint them with potential technical skills to
be acquired through the program. Throughout their research experience,
they will receive help with professional presentations from their IGERT
Trainees. The interns will participate in a survival skills workshop by
Dr. Shinbrot, exposing them to case studies of do’s and don’ts in
communication skills, manuscript writing, and ethics in research. By
the end of summer internship experience, the UGs will be expected to
present their research progress through an oral presentation. The UG
interns will be required to submit a 10-page progress report of the
project, which will be evaluated by the IGERT trainee (40% weight), the
advisor (30%), and the UG program directors (30%). For Rutgers UGs, the
summer project will be declared as a Research Course (491/2) such that
the students receive a course grade.
There are three major outcomes from this program: (a) Research
Scholarship, which can enhance the productivity of the IGERT trainees;
(b) Early exposure of UG interns to emerging advances in the field of
biointerfaces, thus creating a feeder mechanism for entrance into
graduate research in the community; and (c) IGERT trainee development
through mentoring experience.
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