Undergraduate Research Opportunities

CEMB offers summer research opportunities for integrated mechanobiology for undergraduate students.

Please contact Ariel Parker at pariel@seas.upenn.edu or any of the CEMB faculty at other sites, for more information.

For CEMB’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, students participate in a 10-week, on-campus program, working in research groups at the University of Pennsylvania and Washington University at St. Louis. Students are matched to projects within a research group based on their interests, educational background, and previous research experience.

Many projects are interdisciplinary and provide opportunities to develop research skills in the physical sciences, the biological sciences, and engineering. Students develop practical research skills: collaborating, designing experiments, collecting and analyzing data, and communicating results. Other aspects of the program complement the lab experience and are oriented toward professional development and career skills: seminars, journal clubs, and professional and career workshops, including training in ethics.

Research Areas

• Molecular biology
• Cell and tissue mechanics in plants and animals
• Bioengineering
• Biochemistry and biophysics
• Computational biology
• Biomedical devices
• Nanoscale science and engineering

To see examples of past projects, view the Project Archives.

Locations

• University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri

What the Program Offers

• $6500 stipend
• Social activities
• Professional development & networking
• Opportunity to attend a Fall 2026 conference to present your summer research
• For WashU only, on campus housing assistance will be available.