Category Archives: Undergraduate research

Undergraduate research

National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR)

I would like to draw your attention to our National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR).  This conference is an opportunity for your students to present their faculty-mentored research to a multi-disciplinary audience.  NCUR draws students and their mentors from across the nation and several international institutions.  Undergraduates have the opportunity to submit abstracts for a variety of presentation formats: poster, oral presentation, visual arts, or performing arts.
 
This year, the 28th National Conference on Undergraduate Research will be hosted by the University of Kentucky, in Lexington, Kentucky, from April 3 to 5, 2014.  The student abstract submission period will close on December 6, 2013and the Faculty-Administrative Network workshop proposals close on December 14, 2013.
 
 In addition to student presentation sessions, NCUR also offers a graduate school fair, three plenary speakers, and Faculty-Administrative Network sessions, which are designed to share best practices in undergraduate research and scholarship and to provide opportunities for faculty and administrators to meet and share information.
Thank you for considering the NCUR 2014 conference opportunity and for passing along to appropriate students, staff, and faculty.
 
Should you have any questions about NCUR 2014, contact mptwomey@cur.org.
 
Sincerely,
 
Office of Undergraduate Research
(Professor Paul F. Diehl, Director)
Department of Statistics, Undergraduate research

Research Travel Support Competition

Research Travel Support Competition
 
The Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) is sponsoring a Research Travel Grant competition for undergraduate students seeking to conduct research outside of the University of Illinois campus.  The goals for this initiative are to provide students with funds necessary to conduct on-site research at an archive, lab, research center, museum, or a location that has materials not readily available at UI.  The Office of Undergraduate Research recognizes that UI students are conducting cutting edge research on campus, but that funding for research travel is sometimes lacking.  We hope that this competition will both broaden and deepen the type of research being conducted by undergraduate students on campus, and that the recipients are able to use this opportunity as a way of engaging with their fields.
 
Eligibility Requirements:
 
·         Students must be an undergraduate at the time of their research trips.
·         Students have to demonstrate that the resources needed to conduct their research are not available at UI.
·         The research destination must be outside of the University of Illinois campus.
·         Students must be conducting their own research, and therefore cannot conduct research on the behalf of faculty members.
 
Additional Requirements:
 
·         A faculty member, familiar with the student’s research plans, must provide a letter of support.
·         If students use the research as the basis of a presentation at a conference or campus event, there must be an acknowledgement of the Office of Undergraduate Research for its support on the poster or in the paper.
·         Students must provide a one page summary of their research project to OUR following the completion of the project.
 
Funding Restrictions:
 
·         The applications must itemize how the students will spend their time and daily budgets for the duration of the research trips.
·         Support for the following expenses is permitted: airfare, mileage, lodging, copying on site, and use of equipment.
·         No funding will be provided for meals, making copies at the University of Illinois libraries, or for the purchase of equipment.
·         The travel funds will be dispersed on a reimbursement basis only; students must produce receipts for expenses incurred during travel.
Application:
·         Applications are available at https://illinois.edu/fb/sec/4810618
·         There is no deadline for applications, but they must be submitted no later than six weeks prior to     the dates of the travel.
 
Questions?  – send queries to ugresearch@illinois.edu
Sincerely,
Office of Undergraduate Research
(Professor Paul F. Diehl, Director)
Informational Meeting, International study, Undergraduate research

Summer Research Internships in India

Summer Research Internships in India
 
Looking for a summer research opportunity? Consider the opportunity to participate in an international collaboration. The Bose Program places students from all disciplines of science and engineering at leading universities and research laboratories in India. Funding includes housing, a stipend and airfare support. Come learn more about this opportunity from former participants at the Bose Program Information Session on November 20 at 5:30PM in Lincoln Hall Room 1024. To learn more about the program and application process, you can also visit http://www.khorana-bose.org/.
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Undergraduate research

Student Paper Competition – ASA Stat Learning Data Mining Section

Student Paper Competition – JSM 2014 (Boston, MA)
ASA Section on Statistical Learning and Data Mining 
Due 06 January 2014 
 
 
The Section on Statistical Learning and Data Mining (SLDM) of the American Statistical Association is sponsoring a student paper competition for the 2014 Joint Statistical Meetings. The paper might be an original methodological research or analysis of data (from various fields including but not limited to marketing, pharmaceutical, genomics, bioinformatics, imaging, defense, business, public health) that uses principles and methods in statistical learning and data mining. 
 
Papers that have been accepted for publication are not eligible for the competition. Selected winners will present their papers in an organized session at the 2014 JSM in Boston, MA. At the session, they will be presented a monetary prize and an award certificate. Winning papers will be recommended for submission to Statistical Analysis and Data Mining: The ASA Data Science Journal, which is the flagship journal of the SLDM Section.
 
Graduate or undergraduate students who are enrolled in Fall 2013 or Winter/Spring 2014 are eligible to participate. The applicant must be the first author of the paper. All application materials must be submitted electronically (in pdf) and must be sent to Professor Hernando Ombao (hombao@uci.edu) by noon EST, 06 January 2014 (Monday). 
 
All entries must include the following:
1.List of authors and contact information
2.Abstract with no more than 200 words
3.Manuscript – double-spaced with no more than 25 pages including figures, tables, references and appendix
4.Blinded versions of the abstract and manuscript (with no authors nor references that could easily lead to author identification)
5.A reference letter from a faculty member familiar with the student’s work which must include a verification of the applicant’s student status and, in the case of joint authorship, should indicate the fraction of the applicant’s contribution to the manuscript. 
 
All materials must be in English.
 
Entries will be reviewed by the Student Paper Competition Award committee. The selection criteria used by the committee will include statistical novelty, innovation and significance of the contribution to the field of application as well as the professional quality of the manuscript. Award announcements will be made in mid-January 2014. For inquiries, please contact Hernando Ombao (hombao@uci.edu).
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Department of Statistics, Undergraduate research

Request for Graduate and Undergraduate Research Assistants

Our research team is searching for motivated and dependable UIUC students with academic background in statistics, quantitative methods, experimental methodology, and education and psychology. Funding is available for one 0.25 Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) and one undergraduate hourly position (roughly 10 hours per week) as Undergraduate Research Assistant (URA).
Graduate Research Assistant
The GRA will assist with the design of experimental protocols, collection of experimental data, recruitment of subjects, the development of new statistical methodologies, and oversight of Undergraduate Research Assistants (URA).
 
Undergraduate Research Assistant
URAs will assist with the collection of experimental data and recruitment of subjects. Knowledge of quantitative methods is preferred, but not required for the URA.
Requirements
Successful candidates have prior knowledge and experience or have demonstrated the ability to learn content related to:
·         Experimental methodology as employed in education and psychology
·         Item response theory
·         Statistical computing (e.g., Markov Chain Monte Carlo)
·         Programming experience with R or Mathlab
·         Ability to learn how to program with open-source behavioral experiment software (e.g., programming with Python, Java, or C).
Applications
If you are interested in a research position and want to apply please send a cover letter describing the following information your prior research experience and background and experiences in relation to the requirements for the research project.
The deadline for applications is November 29, 2013. Applications (and any questions about the project or positions) should be sent to Dr. Steven Culpepper at sculpepp@illinois.edu.
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Department of Statistics, Seminars, Undergraduate research

GRAD/UNDERGRAD PRESENTATION OPPORTUNITY

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is providing an opportunity for students to present their work in poster sessions at its annual meeting in Chicago February 13-17, 2014 (http://meetings.aaas.org/). Full-time undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to apply; if selected to present a poster, students will be able to have the meeting registration fee waived by serving as AAAS Meeting Session Aides and will be eligible to apply for travel funding.  Details are in the attached flyer; the deadline for submission of poster abstracts is October 24, 2013.

Students and their advisors are urged to take advantage of this unique opportunity to highlight statistical research and its role in interdisciplinary science at the annual meeting of the world’s largest general scientific society.  AAAS publishes the highly respected journal Science and is organized into 24 Sections representing all areas of science, including Section U (Statistics), which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.

Thank you for your help.

Marie Davidian, President, American Statistical Association
Sally Morton, Chair, AAAS Section U (Statistics)

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Marie Davidian
2013 President, American Statistical Association
Professor
Department of Statistics
North Carolina State University

davidian@ncsu.edu
http://www4.stat.ncsu.edu/~davidian/

International Year of Statistics
www.statistics2013.org

Please send correspondence concerning Biometrics to biometrics@tibs.org.
(http://www.biometrics.tibs.org/)

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Scholarships/Fellowships, Undergraduate research

Office of Undergraduate Research Travel Grant Competition

The Office of Undergraduate Research has reopened the Travel Grant Competition for Fall 2013.  Any student that has been accepted to a national or international academic conference can apply.  Winners will receive reimbursements for travel expenses up to a certain dollar amount.  The deadline for submissions is October 1st.
The online submission form can be found here: https://illinois.edu/fb/sec/3849078
Please pass this along to your students.  We will be reopening the competition in the Spring semester as well.
Sincerely,
Office of Undergraduate Research
(Professor Paul F. Diehl, Director)
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Career opportunities, Undergraduate research

Stat and CS opportunity with John Deere

John Deere at Research Park is interested in statistics students looking for part-time employment who would be available to start soon and work at least through December 2014. The opportunity is similar in concept to a year-round internship, but it’s a “Research Assistant” position at Deere rather than part of John Deere’s intern program. They are looking for someone with a combination of Statistics and CS skills, so they can manage our Linux cluster and help us figure out how to work with Apache Hadoop database and statistics packages like Hive, Hbase, Mahout, RHIPE (Purdue) and maybe BigR (Adatao) to analyze our data.

This would be part-time employment throughout the calendar year, averaging 20 hours per week (more in the summer and less during the semesters). R and data mining experience are very important to this role, so grad students (or upper-level undergrads with R and data mining experience) would most likely be the best candidates. Preference will be given to students they have a chance of hiring after graduation, and international candidates would be considered.

Additional details are included below. Contact Andy Stevens at StevensRobertA (at) JohnDeere.com if interested.

Responsibilities:
· Manage telematics data collected from farm research studies
· Process and statistically analyze telematics data from agricultural equipment to quantify work performed and discover insights
· Create reports and presentations of statistical analysis

Basic Qualifications:
· Pursuing Bachelors Degree in Statistics and/or Computer Science
· Coursework in statistical analysis and programming
· Experience statistical graphics, statistical model building, and data mining with the R statistical programming language
· Experience in Linux and Linux cluster system administration
· Ability to write and execute scripting programs to automate workflow
· Ability to use Microsoft Office projects Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to document and communicate results
· Quick learner eager to explore new approaches to speed up routine analysis and apply new, insightful analysis methods

Preferred Qualifications:
· Pursuing MS or Doctorate in Statistics and/or Computer Science
· Advanced knowledge of data mining and machine learning using the R statistical programming language
· Knowledge of Apache Hadoop and associated packages for databases and statistics
· Experience managing databases and writing SQL queries
· Knowledge of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
· Knowledge of agriculture and agricultural equipment