What's New

West Virginia University’s Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) is pleased to announce the participants in the 2020 “Virtual” SURE experience to be held from May 26-July 24, 2020. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the entire SURE experience, including 8-weeks of full-time research and the 1-credit coordinating research class, will be 100% online.  The SURE program is very appreciative of our WVU faculty members who agreed to continue to support undergraduates in virtual research this summer.

Participant

West Virginia University Undergraduate Honored by the Council on Undergraduate Research

Biochemistry major Megan Lauris and her faculty mentor, Dr. Samantha Minc of the Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery – School of Medicine Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, have earned the honor of participating in the 24th annual Posters on the Hill event, a selective poster session sponsored by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), based in Washington, DC. After reviewing 350 highly competitive applications from undergraduate students from colleges and universities nationwide, only 60 projects were selected for this year’s undergraduate research showcase.

Congratulations to Office of Undergraduate Research (UGR) Ambassador Oriana Ovide who discusses her journey to WVU and her development as a researcher in forensics. See her video here. We are proud to have Oriana as a representative for UGR.

4th Annual “Virtual” Undergraduate Spring Symposium - Available April 16 Online
We’re living up to our pioneering Mountaineer spirit by taking WVU’s Undergraduate Spring Symposium online! The "Virtual" Undergraduate Spring Symposium represents an effort on behalf of the WVU community that is both innovative and ambitious. It demonstrates a fortitude of students, faculty mentors, and an administration that is undaunted by trial. It is a testament to the mountaineer spirit.

The Symposium is designed to celebrate creative endeavors and research activities of WVU’s undergraduate students. The symposium will be online and interactive, launching Thursday, April 16, 2020 at noon and running through April 30, 2020.

The Office of Undergraduate Research has announced the recipients of the 2020 Faculty Award for Distinction in Mentoring Undergraduates in Research, that honors faculty members in four categories: behavioral & social sciences, biosciences & health sciences, humanities & the arts, and physical sciences & technology.

Discover Support Systems and networking opportunities designed for first-gen students April 13 - Monday 6 - 7:30 PM!

WVU's "Ambassadors For Change" would like to invite you to a virtual event on first-generation collegiate issues. The goal of the Ambassadors for Change class is to further the education of Rural First-Gen students, and to gain a better understanding of the challenges they face in college. The class has received a WVU Provost sponsored Transform This! Grant, and will host a Virtual Conversation. The class invites everyone to join this Virtual Conversation on April 13th, from 6-7:30 pm on "Zoom". Links can be found here:

The Center for Service and Learning is hosting a Social Action Showcase and Challenge in partnership with WVU’s IDEA Hub Demo Day at the Coliseum on April 24th. The goal of this event is to give students the opportunity to present and be recognized for their work and ideas that have an impact on the community.

Students can pick one of two categories: 

The WV Dept of Agriculture (WVDA) near Charleston is looking for multiple interns (semester and/or summer, paid hourly) and 5-6 permanent positions for people with background in chemistry at various levels. Some openings require research experience; some do not. Much of their work is related to quantitative and qualitative analysis related to food science, water quality, pesticides management, controlled substances regulation, etc. 

 These and other opportunities are being posted to the WVU Handshake system, which provides “one-stop shopping” for various internship and employment opportunities for WVU students. Rachael Conrad <Rachael.Conrad@mail.wvu.edu>, WVU Career Services, can provide more information, or at least point you in the right direction, if you are interested

The Bioinformatics Core is currently seeking 3-5 undergraduate students who are interested in learning high-throughput sequencing data analysis. The training position is paid at $10/hour. The students should be highly self-motivated under the supervision of the Core director (Dr Michael Hu). We expect the students to apply the analysis skills to address specific biology questions from the sequencing data generated by the WVU community and to communicate the results with the Director and collaborating faculties for data interpretation.

Skills gained: The skill sets students will gain depend on the research projects ongoing with the Core. As of now, the students will learn immediate skills on RNA-Seq data analysis. They are also required to expand the skill sets into at least one of the following: Microbiome 16SRNA-sequencing analysis, whole-genome-sequencing for SNP and structural variants, MicroRNA, and Exome sequencing. They will also learn additional skills on ChIP-Seq, ATAC-Seq, and Hi-C, at bulk-cell level and at the more advanced single-cell level.