The John Nambu Memorial Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program offers full-time research opportunities with stipend support for FAU undergraduates. Established in the memory of the late Dr. John Nambu, Professor in the Biological Sciences Department, the program provides undergraduates an opportunity to perform cutting-edge research in neuroscience and behavior-oriented labs on the FAU Jupiter and Boca Raton campuses. These scholarships are exciting and once-in-a-lifetime chances to perform research while expanding scientific expertise through networking with fellow undergrads and faculty mentors, writing and presentations skills. Students often complete a thesis through the ten-week program that runs full-time during the summer semester, with the option of continuing their research into the next academic year. The REU experience concludes by highlighting student accomplishments and summer research projects at the annual Nambu REU Research Day.

This year, the fifth annual John Nambu Memorial Summer REU Program will welcome eight participants from a competitive application process. In addition to spending 28 hours per week conducting research in the laboratory, students will participate in weekly mentoring sessions and professional development workshops focusing on topics such as laboratory safety, experimental design, and scientific communication skills. Program participants will learn about innovative neuroscience research and techniques through seminars hosted by the FAU’s Jupiter Life Science Initiative and partner institutions Scripps Florida and the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. Students will also have the opportunity to network with fellow FAU undergraduates as well as interns from these partner institutions at social gatherings and the program’s culmination. 

2018 REU Scholarship Recipients

 

Samantha Stilley (Blakely Lab) - "Investigating social behavior in mice expressing the DAT variant Val559”

Elizabeth Potts (Blakely Lab) – “Investigation into the subpopulation of serotonin neurons responding to peripheral immune activation"

Mariah Calubag (Stackman Lab) – “CA1 Inhibition Using DREADDs”

Erin Gerlica (Keene Lab) – “Hypocretin and convergence of sleep loss in Astyanax mexicanus”

Anders Yuiska (Duboue and Keene Labs) - "Establishing the Starlet Sea Anemone Nematostella vectensis as a novel model to investigate the evolution of sleep”

Rameen Walters (Godenschwege Lab) –"The effects of wild type and mutant Amyloid Precursor Proteins on descending interneurons"

Taylor Selman (Dawson-Scully Lab) - "Using a Drosophila melanogaster Alzheimer’s Model to Investigate Possible Therapeutics”

 

 

Pictured from Left to Right: Taylor Selman, Rameen Walters, Elizabeth Potts, Anders Yuiska, Erin Gerlica, Mariah Calubag, and Samantha Stilley.