REU Site: A PUI Undergraduate Research Accelerator at Furman University

This Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site award to Furman University, located in Greenville, SC, supports the training of 10 students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2024-2026. In this program, funded by the Division of Chemistry, participants pursue collaborative research projects, with a focus on providing undergraduate research opportunities in all branches of chemistry for students early in their studies. In addition, Furman’s research accelerator model will help develop more robust undergraduate research programs at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) across the Southeast. Participants take part in a three-week program that combines the beginning stages of research with modules taught by the faculty on various activities essential for the research enterprise. They also take part in a Pathway Program, which prepares them for graduate school or industrial careers. The students undertake individual projects encompassing all fields of chemistry. These projects include organic synthesis of natural products, nanomaterial synthesis and materials characterization, inorganic synthesis, computational chemistry directed towards basic problems in physical chemistry, understanding the chemistry of the origins of life, developing photocatalysts for converting light into electricity or fuels, biochemistry of fungal pathogens and protein-DNA binding, electron paramagnetic resonance and optical absorption spectroscopy, understanding the structure and function of DNA-bound sliver clusters, investigating the degradation of herbicides, and developing and applying mass spectrometry instrumentation to solve clinical, biological, and environmental problems. The breadth of research topics is highly suitable for meaningful undergraduate participation, and the Department of Chemistry at Furman University has extensive facilities and a wide array of state-of-the-art instrumentation available for use by REU students and visiting faculty. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.