C & R Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU)

APPLY

Please refer to the tutorial at the bottom of the page to help you through the online application system. If you have a problem that is not addressed in the tutorial, please email Stephanie Ware.

Field Museum's REU Program 2013: The Field Museum of Natural History is offering eight paid REU summer internships for the summer of 2013 (funded through the National Science Foundation). All REU applications must be made via this web site.

The summer internship program will begin June 10. If a university or college schedule conflicts with this start date, interns may ask to start on June 17. The 5th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium will be held Friday, August 16 at the Field Museum. This symposium will be a joint symposium hosted by the Field Museum REU program and the Chicago Botanic Garden REU program. Interns from both programs will be required to give a 10 minute presentation about their research at the symposium. This 10 week summer internship is a full-time program and includes several mandatory evening activities.

Please note: Undergraduate student participants in the REU program must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States or its possessions and must be a freshman, sophomore or junior at the time of application. Seniors cannot apply for an REU internship.

REU student participants receive a stipend of $4,500 for the 10-week program and additional $2,500 subsistence and $250 travel allowance.

Relevant dates:

• Projects posted on website: December 2012
• Applications open: 20-Dec-12, 12:01am CST
• Application deadline: 11-Feb-13, 11:59pm CST
• Letters of reference deadline: 15-Feb-13
• Awards announced: 15-March-13
• Awardee accept / decline deadline: 22-March-13
• REU internship period: 10-June-13 to 16-Aug-13
• Phylogenetic workshop series (weekly) and introductory lectures: 19-June-13 to 24-July-13  (evening class, participation mandatory)
• Research Symposium: 16-Aug-13 (participation mandatory)

2013 REU Projects

• Describing a New Cryptodont Dicynodont from the Permian of Tanzania (Dr. Kenneth D. Angielczyk)
• How to Grow a Dinosaur (Dr. Kenneth D. Angielczyk and Dr. Sterling J. Nesbitt)
• Colonial Animals: One Genetic Individual and Many Bodies (Dr. Scott Lidgard)
• Diversity of tropical lichens (Dr. Thorsten Lumbsch)
• The evolution of nomadic swarm raiders: Determining the genetic component of army ant castes (Dr. Corrie Moreau and Max Winston)
• The Bats of Kenya: assessing the species limits of cryptic species (Dr. Bruce Patterson and Dr. Paul Webala)
• The Open Tree of Life: toward a global synthesis of phylogenetic knowledge (Dr. Richard Ree)
• One-thousand legs: up close and personal (Dr. Petra Sierwald)

We have posted pictures, project descriptions and REU intern symposium abstracts from 2009-2012 on our past REU projects page. Also, you can learn about our 2009, 2010 and 2011 Undergraduate Research Symposia.

You can download a booklet at the bottom of this page that profiles the 2012 Scholarship Committee interns, including the REU participants.

The Field Museum houses one of the world’s foremost scientific collections of biological diversity (>25 million specimens), and supports active biodiversity research around the globe. Despite the urgency of the current biodiversity crisis, few educational opportunities exist for students in the biological sciences to interact with scientists and institutions dedicated to the study of organic diversity. The Field Museum REU program will train a cohort of at least eight students in biodiversity-related research in a 10-week summer program. Each participant will undertake an independent research project supervised by a museum scientist in a discipline such as taxonomy and systematics, phylo/ biogeography, paleontology, molecular phylogenetics, or conservation. Students will experience biological diversity through the use of the museum’s collections in their research, and will be trained in project-relevant techniques and equipment such as the scanning electron microscope, various light microscopy set-ups, and equipment in the Pritzker DNA lab. A six-week course in phylogenetic systematics run concurrently with intern projects will provide a common theoretical framework for their research. REU students will receive an introduction to the Encyclopedia of Life in Field Museum’s Biodiversity Synthesis Center. At the conclusion of the summer students will present their research results to their peers and museum scientists at the Undergraduate Research Symposium. Providing equal opportunity in biodiversity-related research is an important goal of the program.

The current REU program is funded through an REU-Site grant of the National Science Foundation, DBI 11-56594 fo Drs. Petra Sierwald (Zoology) and Kenneth Angielczyk (Geology). The 2009- 2011 REU program was funded through an REU-Site grant of the National Science Foundation DBI: 08-49958 (PIs Petra Sierwald and Peter Makovicky).

Other Scholarship Opportunities