The goal of the Microbial Friends & Foes REU Summer Site is to expose undergraduate students to concepts, research questions, and experimental approaches central to understanding microbial interactions with eukaryotic hosts and host responses to microbes, and to inspire students to seek careers in science. Participants will be placed in host labs where they will work with a faculty mentor as well as graduate student and postdoctoral mentors to develop and implement an independent research project. The research of potential faculty mentors falls broadly into three themes currently growing within the field of host-microbe interactions: (i) the ecology and evolution of microbe-eukaryote interactions, (ii) mechanisms underlying host-microbe interactions, and (iii) genetic and genomic analysis of microbes related to their associations with eukaryotic hosts.

​The 2024 program will run for nine weeks, from June 10 through August 9. Participants will receive a stipend of $700/week ($6,300 total), on-campus housing, a meal allowance, and a travel subsidy. Students are expected to be available for the entirety of the program. (If you anticipate a conflict please contact us.) Applicants will be selected through a review process that matches participants with mentors based on interest.

• Accepted applicants must be available to participate in the entirety of the MFF REU program from June 10, 2024 to August 9, 2024, and MUST be an undergraduate at the time they attend (graduating seniors are ineligible).