Information on 2010 REU Program will be announced this fall

This program is limited to US citizens and US permanent residents. To apply,  send your resume detailing your educational, fellowship and work experience (including your current educational level), current transcripts, two letters of recommendation and a brief letter explaining your rationale in applying to: 

Amy Jackson
NSF REU Summer Internship Program
Gulf Coast Consortia, MS-141
PO Box 1892
Houston, TX  77251-1892.   

Email amyjackson@rice.edu

Photos from our 2009 REU Program

Information on 2008 REU Program

Overview

The acute undergraduate interest in neuroscience remains untapped and undeveloped at the vast majority of U.S. research universities. Our research and training consortium for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, based at Rice University and the adjacent Texas Medical Center, proposes to address this interest and the associated demand from a rapidly growing number of graduate programs. In particular, we intend for our REU site to be an important enhancement of our own existing NIH funded graduate training program in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience. The complexity of the brain, diversity of approaches, and sheer volume of data cry out not only for a mathematical foundation but also for a predictive modeling environment capable of guiding experiment to an ever deeper understanding of the brain. The objective of our consortium is the development and application of tools for model driven experimentation with a focus on the integration of imaging and modeling in neuroscience.

Intellectual Merit   Young, mathematically inclined students of science, mathematics and engineering will be challenged, in a closely mentored vertically integrated program, to develop and apply mathematical and computational methods in the analysis and design of imaging experiments in neuroscience. Students will be introduced to the most salient mathematical methods, given hands-on exposure to neuro-imaging at the molecular, cellular and systems levels, and given detailed instruction in, and the frequent opportunity to exercise, best practices in oral and written presentation.

Broader Impact     We will provide a model program for an undergraduate pipeline into the broadly interdisciplinary, and evermore quantitative, field of neuroscience.  Mathematics has served and been invigorated by neuroscience since the dawn of the latter just over a century ago. A program like ours, centered in a university mathematics department, but with solid two way training and research links to outstanding neuroscience laboratories, will strengthen the connection between Mathematics and Neuroscience by training individuals to develop and apply insights from one side to the other.