Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU)
The final year of the Frontiers in Biomedical Imaging REU program was 2021. Applications are no longer being accepted. Visit this NSF page to learn more about current REU programs.
The Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, created in 1987 by the National Science Foundation, supports students working on a specific research project with faculty, graduate student mentors, and other researchers. The NSF REU site “Frontiers in Biomedical Imaging” was offered through Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. During this 10-week summer program, REU students perform hands-on mentored research in multiple areas that are fundamental to biomedical imaging and bioengineering, including:
- Microscopic imaging
- Medical imaging
- Cell biology
- Human physiology and diseases
- Biomedical instrumentation
- Computational image analysis
- Theory and simulation, and more.
Program includes
- Hands-on mentored research and training in state-of-the-art facilities
- $5,000 stipend and travel support
- Room and board
- Potential travel to the BMES Annual Meeting
- Field trips, social activities, networking events, and professional development opportunities
Faculty mentors, their research topics and lab links
- Catherine Best: Mouse brain cartography using spatial light interference microscopy
- Rohit Bhargava: Label-free spectroscopic imaging of cancer tissue
- Stephen Boppart: Advanced multi-modal optical microscopy
- Wawrzyniec Dobrucki: Multiscale multi-modal imaging of ischemic tissue after therapy
- Martha Gillette: Imaging neuron-muscle interaction dynamics
- Michael Insana: Pre-clinical ultrasonic anatomical and blood-perfusion imaging
- Mark Anastasio: Biomedical image computing with machine learning
- Pablo Perez-Pinera: Imaging native proteins in living cells
- Andrew Smith: Imaging single cytokines on living cells
- Brad Sutton: Imaging the brain microstructure with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
REU highlight stories
- Illinois REU students among presenters at the BMES annual national meeting (2021)
- Illinois’ bioimaging expertise attracts REU students for summer research program (2019)
- REU students gain imaging research experience, professional development (2018)
- Bioimaging REU exposes undergraduates to what grad school is like (2017)
- Undergraduates explore bioimaging in summer research program (2017)
- Illinois research experience redirects engineering student toward medical school (2017, PDF from UVA Today)
- Integrative imaging REU experience featured in Beckman Institute report (2016, PDF)
- Undergrads in Bioimaging REU experience what research, graduate school is like (2016)
- Undergraduates discover opportunities in research (2016)
- Bioimaging REU’s Matt Kavanaugh experiences cancer research at Illinois (2016)
- Wendy Reyes learns life skills — and to like research — in Bioimaging REU (2016)
- Summer research experience exposes undergrads to bioimaging at Illinois (2015)