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| Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship | |
|---|---|
| Name | Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship |
| Abbreviation | SURF |
| Established | Various institutions |
| Type | Fellowship program |
| Purpose | Undergraduate research experience |
| Typical duration | Summer |
| Website | varies |
Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship
A Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship provides undergraduate students with concentrated research experience under the mentorship of faculty at universities, national laboratories, museums, and private institutes. These fellowships commonly link participants with principal investigators at institutions such as Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and California Institute of Technology and often connect to large-scale facilities like Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Argonne National Laboratory. The programs frequently draw applicants from diverse majors, including those associated with Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University, University of Chicago, and University of Oxford.
Many SURF-type programs are modeled after initiatives at places like National Science Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Wellcome Trust, and Medical Research Council-funded centers. Typical hosts include research-oriented departments at University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, ETH Zurich, University of Tokyo, and University of Melbourne. Programs emphasize mentored projects in laboratories associated with faculty from Johns Hopkins University, University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, Northwestern University, and University of Michigan. Partnerships often appear with museums such as the Smithsonian Institution and observatories like European Southern Observatory or projects at CERN and Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Eligibility criteria are set by institutions including National Institutes of Health, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Energy, and philanthropic organizations such as the Gates Foundation and Simons Foundation. Applicants often submit materials to offices at University of California, Los Angeles, University of Washington, University of Texas at Austin, Cornell University, and Brown University. Selection procedures may involve review panels with representatives from Royal Society, American Chemical Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, American Physical Society, and Society for Neuroscience. Typical application components reference mentors at places like Salk Institute, Max Planck Society, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Scripps Research, and Rockefeller University.
Programs usually combine hands-on laboratory work in settings at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Riken, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Kavli Institute, and Weizmann Institute of Science with seminars featuring speakers from Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Fields Medal, Turing Award, and MacArthur Fellows Program recipients. Components include ethics training referencing guidelines from Declaration of Helsinki, safety instruction from Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and data management practices aligned with repositories like Dryad and Zenodo. Workshops often draw collaborators from Kaiser Permanente, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Guggenheim Museum, and Metropolitan Museum of Art for interdisciplinary exposure.
Stipends and funding mechanisms are provided through budgets associated with institutions such as Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and government agencies including European Commission programs and grants administered by National Institutes of Health. Host labs at Bell Labs, Siemens, Boeing Research, IBM Research, and Microsoft Research sometimes sponsor internships with salaries comparable to stipends from Wellcome Trust. Travel awards may be administered via offices at American Physical Society, American Mathematical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and Association for Computing Machinery.
Alumni commonly matriculate to graduate programs at Stanford University, Harvard University, MIT, Princeton University, Caltech, University of Cambridge, Oxford University, Yale University, and University of Chicago. Career trajectories include roles at companies like Google, Apple Inc., Facebook, Amazon (company), Tesla, Inc. and research positions at Bell Labs, IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Siemens Research, and Huawei. Recipients often coauthor papers appearing in journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, The Lancet, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Networking benefits extend to conferences like American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, American Physical Society March Meeting, NeurIPS, and International Conference on Machine Learning.
Representative hosts include universities and labs: California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, University of Texas at Austin, Cornell University, University of California, San Diego, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, Northwestern University, University of California, Los Angeles, Rutgers University, Purdue University, University of Florida, Michigan State University, Rice University, Brown University, Vanderbilt University, Emory University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Arizona State University, University of Arizona, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Notre Dame, University of Minnesota, Texas A&M University, Ohio State University, Penn State University, University of Southern California, George Washington University, Howard University, Spelman College, Morehouse College, Scripps Research, Rockefeller University, Max Planck Society, Weizmann Institute of Science, Riken, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, CERN, European Southern Observatory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Ames Research Center, NOAA, Smithsonian Institution, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, American Museum of Natural History.
Alumni of SURF-type programs have been associated with breakthroughs by researchers at Frances Arnold, David J. Wineland, Jennifer Doudna, Shinya Yamanaka, Roger Penrose, Kip Thorne, Alan Turing-era influences, and innovators connected to companies like Google DeepMind, OpenAI, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Moderna. Contributions span publications in Nature Physics, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Science Translational Medicine, Cell Reports, and technical reports cited at conferences such as International Conference on Learning Representations, International Conference on Robotics and Automation, and SIGGRAPH. Award-bearing alumni have received honors from MacArthur Fellows Program, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, Rhodes Scholarship, Marshall Scholarship, Truman Scholarship, Fulbright Program, and discipline-specific prizes from American Chemical Society and Royal Society.
Category:Undergraduate research programs