REU Site: Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity in Chemistry (SUROC) at UNC Chapel Hill

This Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site award to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, located in Chapel Hill, NC supports the training of 8 students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2027-2029. In this program, participants pursue collaborative research projects, with a focus on analytical chemistry, sustainability, and renewable energy. Participants also take part in a professional development and ethics training program, with a focus on science communication and preparation for graduate school or industrial careers. By providing research experiences enriched by cohort building, mentor training, workshops, a graduate school mini expo, and a research conference, this site trains undergraduates for careers in STEM and strengthens connections between The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) from around the nation. Research projects for undergraduate students span wide-ranging areas that include femtosecond spectroscopy, synthetic methods, catalysis, polymer design and synthesis, solar energy conversion, and biological chemistry. The skills gained from the fundamental research on these projects will serve students seeking to attend graduate school for careers in advanced manufacturing, quantum information science and biotechnology. In addition to hands-on laboratory work, undergraduate students will participate in professional development workshops in ethics, communication, and entrepreneurship with site visits to a local manufacturing pilot plant and a biotech startup company. By leveraging the department’s breadth of research, collaborative nature, and interdisciplinary spirit, undergraduates with as little as two years of course and lab work in chemistry will develop skills to design and test a hypothesis, execute experiments that are robust and reproducible, write and communicate science, and become entrepreneurially minded. 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.