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Earth from Spaceship
Pipetting Samples and Test Tube

Explore some of our many research areas

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HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS

Team up with an inspirational physicist that works at the CERN particle accelerator that contributed to research on the Higgs Boson (its discovery won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics). Students will work with real data from the CMS detector at CERN on Higgs and non-Higgs events to produce a 3D-topology of particle collisions that can enhance the way particle physicists will analyze ground-breaking experiments. 

Climate Change Banners

CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY

Examine the very forces that are shaping how we live on our planet, such as climate change, energy, sustainability, and migration. How do policy actors make decisions from a social identity theory perspective? What are the impacts of energy projects on communities? How can we create an equitable transition to cleaner energy? What is the relationship between energy infrastructure and well-being? What are the barriers that keep individuals from taking action on climate change? Expand your critical faculties with an insightful Michigan State University sociologist. 

DNA Chips

BIOENGINEERING,
BIOINFORMATICS & AI

Team up with a research engineer currently pursuing their PhD at the Watson School of Engineering at the State University of New York that has worked with national research labs, startup companies, and research networks using artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve biomedicine and healthcare. Create machine learning models and artificial intelligence tools to help classify and diagnose images of lung cancer, perform bioinformatic analyses on matching DNA sequences and gene expression microarrays from the NCBI and Metabolomics Workbench, and test null hypotheses on clinical data using biostatistics to improve healthcare regimens. What biological or chemical factors improve the success of drug therapies? What can gene families tell us about gene expression is regulated? How can we predict the probability of certain health conditions in biological experiments and disease statuses in patients?

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NEURAL COMPUTING

Dive into cutting-edge science with a scholar that works at both Columbia University and a US government research lab on the macroscopic structural wiring within our brains. Using data representing several individuals, the structural wiring is explored in the form of connectivity matrices that allow us to mathematically characterize, using graph theory, commonalities and uniqueness across individuals.

Law

HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS

Gain invaluable mentorship under a philosopher that completed her PhD from the New School for Social Research in New York. She has published and taught in several areas from a philosophical perspective, including medicine, journalism, media, technology, sports, policing, environmentalism, and animal rights. Engage in a deep inquiry into human nature, personal identity or the self, history, memory, race, class, gender, sex, meaning, or time. Whether it's the philosophy of consciousness and neuroscience or an in-depth study of the work of thinkers such as Plato and Heidegger, or various historical schools of thought such as stoicism, utilitarianism, existentialism or social contract theory, you are bound to accelerate in your intellectual development.

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SPORTS PSYCHOLOGY

Learn about the benefits and drawbacks of youth sport and exercise participation with a psychology professor that has taught at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts for over 20 years. We will explore the way parents, coaches, and youth sport organizations impact the types of experience children and adolescents have with sport and how those experiences affect their overall development. We will also consider individual characteristics, like motivation, mental toughness, and personality traits, interact with features of the sport environment to predict outcomes.

Data Processing

HEALTH & AI

Learn to leverage data science and machine-learning for healthcare innovation with a researcher at Campbell University's medical school with published works in the areas of clinical informatics in journals such as Cell - Patterns, Nature - Scientific Reports, and Military Medicine, as well as research collaborations with physicians and PhDs from institutions such as Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and the National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine. From demographic data to medical imaging, investigate and pursue advances in healthcare by exploring and analyzing data both statistically and through machine-learning techniques.

Lecture Room

COVID & ONLINE EDUCATION

Team up with a social scientist affiliated with New York University that has worked with several Fortune 100 companies on tracking important trends that are rapidly shifting the social and educational landscape around us. Explore topics such as the satisfaction of students with online education during COVID, studies about lessons learned or best practices for online education. Pursue exploratory research that not only identifies key lessons or practices but also points to gaps in our current knowledge about online education. 

Woman on Window Sill

HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY

Explore the eye-opening field of health disparities with a passionate expert at Virginia Commonwealth University. See how our social world impacts our physical world, and how we can discuss and create change in areas concerning women’s health, social justice, and sexting. How do certain stereotypes around race impact a person’s interaction with healthcare services? How do social identities like race, sexual orientation, and gender identity impact our sexual health and bodies? How are social media platforms used to discuss social justice issues? Why do some people share sext messages without consent? These sample research areas enable students to discover the fascinating and important world of health psychology. 

Petri Dishes

Program

"Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose."
Zora Neale Hurston, American Anthropologist

Program Outline

 

The Program consists of 22 video hours and 11 hours of email mentorship, and can be flexibly scheduled over a 8-12 month period. Students will learn and demonstrate the following learning outcomes through the course of their research mentorship: 

Sessions 1-5

Foundations

  • Examine discipline-specific foundations 

  • Identify the structure of an academic paper 

  • Examine discipline-specific research methods

  • Analyze further readings

  • Identify ethical and unethical scientific practices and describe the responsibility of scientists

Sessions 8-15

Experimentation / Analysis

For topics under natural sciences (e.g., astronomy, environmental science, biology)

  • Design a research experiment and collect data 

  • Conduct the experiment

  • Identify and use relevant quantitative research methods

  • Analyze results


For topics under social sciences (e.g., sociology, economics, psychology)

  • Design and conduct a research experiment

  • Identify and use relevant qualitative research methods

  • Analyze results 

For topics under mathematics and computer sciences:

  • Outline the proof, or design the computational experiment 

  • Identify and use relevant mathematical methods or algorithms

  • Develop the proof or algorithm

  • Interpret and analyze results, validate model, or prove the conjecture  

    

For topics under humanities (e.g., philosophy, religion, ethics)

  • Review assumptions and organize primary and secondary source

  • Finalize thesis and outline 

  • Identify and use a theoretical model 

  • Interpret, critique, and evaluate arguments

Sessions 20-22

Revisions

  • Discuss peer-reviewer comments and revise paper accordingly 

  • Resubmit paper 

  • Second revisions (if necessary)

Sessions 6-7

Research Topic Determination

  • Review sample research topics or formulate a new list of possible topics

  • Distinguish between strong and weak research questions

  • Formulate a research problem 

  • Develop a testable hypothesis or provisional thesis and outline

Sessions 16-17

Writing the Research Paper

  • Draft a rough edit of the paper

  • Design effective visuals or graphs to effectively convey results

Sessions 18-19

Final Edit

  • Finalize the paper

  • Develop a list of suitable journals

  • Submit the paper

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