Undergraduate Research Opportunities

Undergraduates are an essential part of our leading-edge research. There are many ways to contribute to impactful research early in your career, from summer programs to paid research positions with faculty.

Year Long Research

• CS Student Ambassador/Research Scholars (CS STARS) is the school's program for undergraduate students interested in pursuing research while serving as department leaders and community builders.
• Illinois Scholars Undergraduate Research (ISUR) Program is a Grainger Engineering program with a research-focused seminar and paid undergraduate research programs. ISUR programs follow an apprenticeship model, where students work closely with faculty mentors such as:
  
  • Clare Boothe Luce Research Scholars an ISUR-affiliated program supporting undergraduate women in research and teaching in science, mathematics, and engineering. Eight scholars are selected and funded each year.
  • C3SR-Undergraduate Research in Artificial Intelligence is an IBM-Illinois and ISUR partnership funding undergraduate AI and cognitive computing research, from theory to practical application while working with a C3SR faculty mentor.
• The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) SPIN is an academic internship program for undergraduate students to participate in supercomputing, visualization, data analytics, and similar fields with five weekly paid hours.

Semester Long Research

• CS Job Portal is our department's employment opportunities with course assistant and undergraduate research positions.
• PURE (Promoting Undergraduate Research in Engineering) is a student-run research program connecting first-year and second-year students with graduate student mentors to jump-start their research careers. 

Summer Research

• DaRin Butz Research Scholars is an ISUR-affiliate program offering undergraduate women ten weeks of summer research program funding using a learning-by-apprenticeship model for innovative work in computer science, aerospace, engineering, physics, or astronomy.
• The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) INCLUSION program is a 10-week program for students from underrepresented communities to work in pairs with mentors on research aimed toward social impact based around open-source software development.
• Summer Research Program for Undergraduates (SRP) students work on state-of-the-art research with university faculty while attending professional development programs aimed at making students strong researchers and graduate school candidates
• Mind in Vitro Undergraduate Summer Research Program undergraduate researchers work with faculty mentors and graduate students on projects related to Mind in Vitro while participating in the Illinois summer research program networking, socials, lunches, and seminars.

Mentorship Opportunities

• Mentoring Undergraduates in Science and Engineering (MUSE) is a Grainger Engineering program for undergraduate students to be mentored for career development, research, and thesis guidance.

Showcase Opportunities

• Engineering Research Fair is hosted by Grainger Engineering every semester for researchers to share their work and labs and for companies recruiting researchers.
• Undergraduate Research Symposium is a yearly campus-wide research symposium for undergraduate researchers to present the results of their research and gain experience presenting work to a wider audience.