New Initiatives in PCCM REU Program

The Princeton Center for Complex Materials has run a highly successful Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program for over a decade. The 33 participants in 2007’s program were selected from a strong pool of 310 applicants, and through our Partnership for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) with California State University – Northridge (CSUN), we were able to include five CSUN undergraduates in this group. Through our REU program, students become familiar with Princeton as well as research; five former REU students are currently enrolled here as Ph.D. candidates, across two science and two engineering departments.

PCCM is partnering with the Cornell, Northwestern, and MIT MRSECs to create an innovative new online collaborative research community of REU students across the country in the NSF-sponsored NSDL MatDL “Soft Matter Wiki” pilot program of the Materials Digital Library (MatDL), part of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) project. Our 2007 PCCM REU students tested the Wiki and provided feedback, and Laura Huntley (PCCM REU ’07) presented the project at the MRS 2007 Fall Meeting.