AAP Summer Research Fellowship in Integrative Biology | School of Integrative Biology

Now in its 10^th year, the AAP Summer Research Fellowship in Integrative Biology offers undergraduate students in the Access and Achievement Program (AAP) the opportunity to explore biological research with faculty, graduate students, and research staff in the School of Integrative Biology. This opportunity is designed for students with little or no research experience. During the summer, fellows will conduct research, attend regular professional development seminars, participate in a summer research symposium, and build their research network.

Goals/Purpose of the Fellowship

The primary goals of this fellowship are to provide students with:

Hands-on experience conducting cutting-edge research in the biological sciences
Exposure to the research process and tools used by academic researchers
An appreciation for the challenges of academic research
The opportunity to form personal and professional networks with faculty and other students

This fellowship is a 10-week research experience with a paid stipend of $7000 to be paid to student throughout the course of the summer.

See video interviews with past research fellows to learn more about this program.

Eligibility

Any undergraduate student (undeclared or biology majors; Freshman, Sophomores, or Juniors preferred) who is a part of the Access and Achievement Program is encouraged to apply for this program.

Requirements

Recipients of fellowship must be able to:

Applicant must be an undergraduate student in good standing with the LAS Access and Achievement Program
Students are expected to work approximately 40 hours per week for the duration of the fellowship, and therefore may not enroll in summer coursework or other part-time jobs
Students must commit to the full 10-week research experience (May 20, 2024 to August 2, 2024)
Students must attend research lab meetings as required by their research mentor
Students must attend and present at the Integrative Biology Summer Research Symposium in early-August
At the end of the fellowship, students must write a brief summary of summer research experience

Application Timeline

Applications accepted from January 15 until March 1, 2024 at 6 pm.
Click here to access the application form.

Informational Meetings

Attend one of our information meetings to get tips on creating a successful application and have your questions answered.

February 1, from 4-5 pm in Lincoln Hall, Room 1000
February 19, from 4-5 pm in Lincoln Hall, Room 1090

Questions Regarding Fellowship

Contact the fellowship organizers:

Dr. Chris Holmes, Associate Director, Office of Undergraduate Research

Raymona Wicks, Assistant Director, Access and Achievement Program

Sean Beal, Academic Advisor, Access and Achievement Program

Dr. Ken Paige, Professor, Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior

Lisa Surber-Cunningham, PhD Student, Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior

What does the fellowship involve?

Structure of Program

Students selected for this fellowship will begin their 10 week research fellowship on May 20, 2024 During the course of the summer, you will learn laboratory techniques, form connections with other undergraduates conducting research, execute a research project designed by your mentor, be involved with outreach in the local Champaign-Urbana community, and present research at an undergraduate research symposium (for your friends and family to attend).

Faculty Mentor List

Lisa Ainsworth

Research in the Ainsworth Lab aims to improve crop responses to climate change.

Brian Allan

I am broadly interested in the ecology of infectious diseases and particularly diseases that are transmitted to humans from wildlife through infected arthropods (e.g., ticks and mosquitoes). I am also interested in the consequences of human-mediated global change on the risk of exposure to these parasites and pathogens.

Philip Anderson

In my research program I synthesize biomechanical, paleontological and evolutionary methods to answer broad, macroevolutionary questions regarding biodiversity and morphological evolution. The form-function relationship is central to understanding the diversity of life on Earth. How an animal’s phenotype (structure, morphology, physiology) interacts with its environment is a key component of evolutionary theory and is vital to understanding both microevolutionary concepts, such as adaptation, and macroevolutionary concepts, such as cladogenesis and biodiversity.

Alison Bell

Research in the Bell Lab is focused on understanding why individual animals behave differently from each other. In other words, why do individuals of the same species have different personalities? We study the proximate mechanisms underlying personality and the ultimate (evolutionary) consequences of personality using three-spined stickleback fish (mostly) as a model system.

Steven Burgess

Over the next century the Midwest is predicted to have heavier early season rains, and warmer, drier summers. This is a problem, as our crops are not adapted to these conditions, resulting in yield losses at a time when we need to increase food supplies. However, hope is provided by the amazing ability of plants to adapt to climates across the globe, and a better understanding of these adaptations could aid crop improvement efforts. The Burgess Lab therefore combines physiology, biochemistry and synthetic biology to understand and combat the causes of yield losses resulting from climate change.

Carla Cáceres

We focus on questions at the interface of population, community and evolutionary ecology. At its core, our research focuses on how biodiversity arises, how is it maintained, and what is its functional significance from the scale of organismal traits to ecosystems. To accomplish this, we study the organisms that inhabit lakes and experimental ponds across the US. Our lab focuses on three related areas of inquiry:

How do ecological and evolutionary processes interact to shape life-history variation?
How do feedbacks between genetic and species diversity influence metacommunity dynamics?
How do ecological and evolutionary processes interact to shape the distribution and abundance of disease

Li-Qing Chen

The Chen lab interested in understanding the control of sugar flux in plants. We aim to increase crop yield and biofuel production or improve crop resilience to stress conditions by engineering sugar flux using a combination of in vivo biochemistry, cell biology, molecular genetics, and synthetic biology.

Adam Dolezal

The Dolezal Lab studies how ecological stressors, like nutrition, landscape composition/ecology, viral pathogens, and sublethal pesticide exposure interact to affect these pollinators. Working mostly in Midwestern agroecosystems dominated by row crop agriculture, his lab uses of a variety of approaches, including landscape ecology, ethology, physiology, and genomics to study these interactions and better understand how field-relevant stressors contribute to bee declines. Adam is also a first-generation college graduate, originally from Illinois, and a graduate of the University of Illinois, so he is passionate about helping students from diverse background achieve their goals in science.

Dominic Evangelista

Our lab explores the evolutionary origins of biodiversity in insects and other arthropods. We are interested in learning more about the origins of tropical biodiversity in Peru and elsewhere in order to better assess conservation risks. We may offer students opportunities in molecular techniques, field work, bioinformatics, morphology, statistics, and science communication for a comprehensive learning experience.

Eva Fischer

A central goal of integrative biology is to understand how genetic and environmental influences interact to produce well adapted phenotypes, but our understanding of how underlying mechanisms bias evolutionary outcomes remains limited. The goal of our research is to explore underlying mechanisms to understand how behaviors are generated, maintained, and modified by evolution. We use integrative approaches to address these questions across hierarchical levels of biological organization and timescales. Because fundamental principles governing brains and behavior are most apparent in evolutionary and developmental contexts, we combine lab and field studies to understand variation and adaptation in ecologically relevant behaviors. Currently, we work primarily with charismatic neotropical frogs.

Becky Fuller

We are broadly interested in ecology and evolution as it applies to fishes. My students and I try to capitalize upon this variation to ask questions about:

how natural and sexual selection vary over time and space,
the extent to which variation among/within populations is attributable to genetic variation, phenotypic plasticity, and their interaction, and
how variation in lighting environments and visual systems alters selection on coloration.

Katy Heath

The Heath Lab answers a variety of exciting questions in evolution, genetics, and ecology – mostly focusing on the symbiosis between leguminous plants (peas, beans, soybeans) and their myriad bacterial and fungal partners. We use experiments, sequencing, and field studies to understand how mutualisms coevolve and remain mutually beneficial over time and space and how these interactions are changing and will continue to change as the environment is rapidly altered by human activities. We work across scales to study how genes and mobile genetic elements (like bacterial plasmids!) drive rapid evolution, how these changes influence plant health, and also how plant-microbe interactions scale up to influence communities and even ecosystem processing. We have a large, engaged, and diverse group of scientists ranging from college freshman to graduate students to postdocs who interact routinely individually, in small groups, and in a large lab group setting – all of which helps new undergraduates get a foothold in science.

Dan Miller

Our lab seeks to create the next generation of brain map for basic and clinical applications. We use advanced computational methods like deep learning to speed up the analysis of anatomical specimens which enables deeper insight into the structure and function of the brain.

Esther Ngumbi

I am interested in understanding the multifaceted uses of chemical signals (both volatile and non-volatile) by herbivores, natural enemies, plants and their associated microorganisms and insects. Moreover, my research on beneficial soil microbes seeks to find microbial-based solutions for improving crop production, alleviating drought stress in crop plants and sustainable pest management.

James O'Dwyer

The O’Dwyer Lab's focus is in ecological theory and complex systems, applied to a variety of taxonomic groups. We are interested in what kinds of theoretical models can explain patterns and phenomena in ecological communities, and in how to infer and validate these models with imperfect data. These data range from time series data, where species abundances are measured on relatively short, intragenerational timescales, to phylogenetic trees, where we use the deep evolutionary history of a group of organisms to infer processes, to spatially-explicit data at a snapshot in time. We are primarily a `dry’ lab, meaning that the tools we use are mostly computers, pencil and paper, and coffee.

Ken Paige

Current research centers on 1) the ecology and evolutionary biology of species interactions with an emphasis on overcompensation (enhanced fitness following herbivory). 2) conservation genetics, focusing on the ecological and evolutionary consequences of small population size. 3) phylogeographic analyses with a focus on understanding how organisms have responded to anthropogenic, geologic and climatic history and 4) the role of somatic mutation and chromosome amplification in allowing an individual plant to evolve and adapt to environmental challenges.

Surangi Punyasena

The Punyasena lab has two main projects this summer.

Project 1: Coal balls are permineralized 300-million year old plant fossils that capture cellular-level details of ancient plants. The Phillips Coal Ball Collection at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign stands as the largest and most significant collection of coal balls globally. Our lab is currently digitally archiving this collection, aiming to enhance accessibility for teaching and research purposes. Students will undergo training to operate a high-powered stereo microscope and to identify the fossilized plants found within the peels.

Project 2: We use cutting-edge microscopy to discover and interpret the phylogenetic history of plant species preserved in fossil pollen morphology. Participants will receive training in the use of optical superresolution microscopes and slide scanning microscopes and in image processing and preparation.

Andy Suarez

In the Suarez Lab, we use ants as model organisms to address a variety of questions in ecology and behavior. Some of current projects include examining trade-offs in investment into worker size versus number, the evolution of queen fertility signals, and the biomechanics of force production in "trap-jaw" ants.

Wendy Yang

We are broadly interested in how human activities are changing how natural and managed ecosystems function and how ecosystem responses to global change can feedback to drive or slow future global change. Our research is in terrestrial biogeochemistry and ecosystem ecology with a focus on determining process rates and drivers of chemical transformations in the environment.

Criteria for Application

Students must be affiliated with the Access and Achievement Program (AAP). Freshman, Sophomores, and Juniors are encouraged to apply.

Time Requirements

Students will conduct research for 10 weeks from May 20, 2024 until August 2, 2024. Exact fellowship start and ending dates are flexible and are dependent on mentor availability. Please notify the program coordinators if you have difficulty fulfilling this requirement.
Attend and present at the iBio Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium. Here, you will give a short presentation on your summer work to a small group of peers and faculty mentors - occurs in late-July.
Write a brief summary of summer research experience to be turned into the program organizers shortly following the completion of the summer fellowship.

Pay

Student will receive a paid stipend $7,000 to cover living expenses for the three month research experience.