Other Research Opportunities

If you want to make a research part of your undergraduate experience, you've come to the right university. Our faculty—your professors—are engaged in research that extends from solar flares to deep ocean trenches, from the Civil War history to the future of the American family, from global climate change to genome studies. Their work sheds light on old questions and opens up new branches of knowledge. It takes them around the state, across the nation, and around the world.

And they want you to join them.

Explore research opportunities

Research Opportunities at UNH

A great place to begin your exploration of the research centers at UNH is the home page of the Research Office. There you will find   links to the major research institutes and centers at UNH: http://www.unh.edu/research/ 

The McNair Graduate Opportunity Program supports undergraduates who wish to pursue research under the supervision of a faculty mentor, and to prepare for the challenges of applying to graduate school, passing exams, and finding financial support. It serves low-income students, first-generation university students, and those from racial or ethnic backgrounds traditionally under-represented in academia. www.unh.edu/mcnair.

The Shoals Marine Laboratory (SML), operated jointly by UNH and Cornell University, offers marine biology, ecology, animal behavior, and archaeology courses on Appledore Island in the Gulf of Maine.

Classes range from introductory-level marine ecology and field biology, to specialized topics such as marine vertebrates, climatology, field ornithology, sustainability, and forensics. All SML classes are intensive, hands-on, and field-oriented; faculty and students come from institutions across the US and around the world.

Shoals courses carry UNH credit, fulfill requirements in a number of UNH majors, and may be designated as Honors. Substantial financial aid is available for UNH students. See http://marine.unh.edu/sml for more information.  Information is also available from the main SML office (shoals-lab@cornell.edu), or from Associate Director Jessica Bolker (jbolker@cisunix.unh.edu).

SML offers three types of paid summer research internships: sustainable engineering, seabird conservation, and RIFS (Research in Field Science). A total of 13 internship places are available, and preference is given to applications from UNH and Cornell. Island work internships are also available. Application deadlines vary by program and are in February and March.

Additional information can be found at the following links:

Internships
http://www.sml.cornell.edu/sml_students_internships.html

Credit courses
http://www.sml.cornell.edu/sml_students_creditcourses.html

Financial aid for credit courses
http://www.sml.cornell.edu/sml_students_feesandaid.html

Research and Discover: Join some of the nation's top scientists at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space this summer for a paid internship through the UNH-Goddard Joint Center for the Earth Sciences: www.eos.sr.unh.edu/ResearchAndDiscover/.

The New Hampshire Space Grant Consortium is a collaboration of the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College. Through Space Grant, UNH undergraduates pursuing degrees in the earth sciences, engineering, physics and astronomy, natural resources, computer science, molecular biology, and education can apply for research internships: www.nhsgc.sr.unh.edu/.

The Carsey Institute is becoming a leading national center for policy research on youth, working families, and sustainable development in small cities and rural communities. http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/

UNH Research Project on Biodiversity in the Gulf of Mexico

It has been a long-standing conundrum that eukaryotic meiofauna (organisms 45μm-1mm, such as nematodes, protists, diatoms, etc.) are both the most numerous animals on the planet yet remain completely invisible to the public and even many biologists.  This well-recognized gap in the understanding of global meiofaunal biodiversity represents one of the major challenges in biology and limits our capacity to understand, mitigate and remediate the consequences of environmental change.  Driven by fundamental advances in DNA sequencing, new high-throughput sequencing (HTS) platforms (454, Illumina) make it possible to explore biodiversity at a scale that allows for the discovery of virtually all of the of the organisms in an environmental sample. It is now possible to conduct en mass meiofaunal biodiversity assessment (metagenetics) using traditional molecular loci (e.g. ribosomal rRNA, Creer et al., 2010; Sogin et al., 2006) at a fraction of the time and cost required for traditional taxonomic approaches.  The Thomas Lab at UNH was recently awarded a RAPID response grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct a metagenetic study in the Gulf of Mexico This project is addressing three key questions:  1) How unique are the communities in the Gulf of Mexico?, 2) How structured are the communities within the Gulf of Mexico?, and 3) What has been the effect of anthropogenic disturbance on these communities?  To address these questions, we will utilize cutting-edge HTS technologies alongside traditional taxonomic methods of analysis in order to assay the diversity of virtually all eukaryotic organisms from samples collected before and after April 2010 spill, representing diverse habitats (intertidal to deep-sea sediments) across the Gulf of Mexico.

Application details:

All students are encouraged to apply.

This project would be an ideal opportunity for students looking to gain cross-disciplinary experience (e.g. biologists who want experience in computational biology, or computer scientists who want to learn biology).

Opportunity for an in-depth project may be available though an application for a 10-week summer fellowship (this may be especially of interest for students with advanced molecular biology skills).

Contact Holly Bik for more information.

Research opportunities beyond UNH

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH): The NEH offers summer internships in Washington, D.C. Past interns have written articles for Humanities, the NEH magazine, researched emerging fields in the humanities, and developed web-based tools for gathering humanities-related information. Check it out: www.neh.gov/whoweare/NEH_Internships.html.

UC Irvine Research List: The University of California at Irvine's UROP program maintains an excellent list of research opportunities for undergraduates. Log on to www.urop.uci.edu/ and click on "Off campus Research Opportunities."

The Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOAR) at the University of Colorado engages ethnically diverse students in careers dedicated to the atmospheric and related sciences. It includes a ten-week summer component at the national Center for Atmospheric Research and other laboratories. www.ucar.edu/soars.

Study abroad programs with a research focus

School for International Training Brattleboro, Vermont
www.sit.edu/studyabroad/index.html

Lexia International Hanover, New Hampshire
www.lexiaintl.org

Field studies programs with field work/research focus

School for Field Studies
www.fieldstudies.org

Round River Conservation
www.roundriver.org