The Research Experience for Undergraduates program gives undergraduate students an opportunity to take an active role in scientific research. Top students from Arizona State University (ASU), Old Dominion University (ODU), Rutgers University (RU) and Texas A&M Corpus-Christi (TAMUCC) are selected. For nine weeks these students are challenged to perform at the level of a graduate student producing publications for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Data Nuggets program and the Philippines PIRE project. We are proud of our project alumni and their accomplishments.
Congratulations to the students selected to the 2019 Research Experience for Undergraduates:
Arizona State University
Michaela Shope
Old Dominion University
Nichole Leach
Rutgers University
Adriana Chumacero
Texas A&M Corpus-Christi
Zoe Ruben
Congratulations to the students selected to the 2018 Research Experience for Undergraduates:
Arizona State University
Michael Shire
Old Dominion University
Alexis Clark
Rutgers University
Marhuma A Zaman, Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences
My name is Marhuma Zaman. I am a student at Rutgers University majoring in Biological Sciences. I am graduating with an undergraduate degree in May 2019. As an undergraduate, I kept my field of education in biology broad, because I wanted to gain general knowledge about all the specialties in the field of biology and find out which specific subsection interested me the most.
I had the chance to explore the field of Marine Biology as part of the PIRE summer undergraduate research experience of 2018. I learned about various ecological aspects of marine environments. I also learned about the significance of fisheries in marine environments. During the summer, I performed an independent research project where I looked at microbial diversity in the common ponyfish, Leiognathus equulus. In addition, I learned about various bioinformatics applications that modern scientists use. I also learned many aspects about and basic techniques of IUCN Red-list assessments. Overall, the summer of 2018 was truly an eye-opening period for me. The short time that I spent learning about the microbial communities during my research did not satisfy my curiosity about the microbes. I want to learn more about the field of microbiology and microbial communities. Therefore, I am applying to graduate school for microbial biology.
Currently, I am working in an ecology research lab under Dr. Malin Pinsky. In the lab, some of the researchers study population genetics, fishery effects, larval migration and dispersal, climate change effects on marine environment, and many other important ecological questions. Some of the very useful skills that I am gaining as a part of this lab includes performing multivariate data analysis, data storage, and the use of R programing to run various statistical analyses. In addition, I am learning about different types of ecological research topics that thousands of scientists are working on around the world through lab meetings and discussions.
As I gain important skills and knowledge in the field of microbial biology during my future graduate studies, I would like to apply those skills to the field of ecology as well. Microbial Ecology is a growing research field that has been gaining popularity rapidly over the past couple years. I would want to become a part of the growing field of Microbial Ecology one day.
Texas A&M Corpus-Christi
Micah Bachner