Undergraduate Research Stories

When the university shifted mid–spring semester to fully remote learning in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, Roadrunners conducting and supporting undergraduate research efforts pivoted quickly to continue their scholarly work.

“You have to not be afraid to fail,” said undergraduate researcher Abbigayle Cuomo ’21. “I had to keep an open mind and be willing to try and work for it.”

More than 70 St. Thomas undergraduate students spent their summer doing research on a diverse range of subjects through St. Thomas’ Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

Research rarely rests. All year long, Illinois State University student and faculty researchers alike delve into their research with passion. Despite many Redbirds being away from campus over the summer, research at Illinois State continues to thrive—even during the pandemic.

Flip through a brochure for practically any institution of higher learning and you’re sure to see a familiar photo: goggled student, pipette in one gloved hand, petri dish in the other, beaming amid Bunsen burners and beakers in a brightly lit laboratory.

It has been a summer of firsts for Georgia State University Perimeter College student Devin Jordan: his first time on a boat, his first time to see dolphins and sharks in the wild and his first onsite research experience.

Research by Embry-Riddle senior Haleema Irfan will help create a sensor for detection of a serious problem encountered by astronauts on long-term spaceflights: hydrocephalus, or an accumulation of fluid in the brain.

St. Olaf College’s Collaborative Undergraduate Research and Inquiry (CURI) program has gone virtual this summer. But the online setting hasn’t stopped students from diving into their research with the same eagerness and drive that has characterized past on-campus CURI programs.

Two students in Mississippi State’s Judy and Bobby Shackouls Honors College are receiving an out-of-this-world opportunity from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

For centuries in the western world, the study of science has been dominated by a specific demographic – those with economic and cultural advantages necessary to advance in academics and research careers. Likely white, likely male. In 2018, a National Institutes of Health study found that, over the previous seven years, only 1% of NIH grants for experienced investigators went to underrepresented minorities. The percentages for early stage and new investigator funding were only slightly higher.