Do you want to get involved in research and feel the excitement of doing something new - pushing back the frontiers of knowledge? Yes, undergraduates can do this! Currently many undergrads are contributing to cutting edge research projects. Some students are part of the team of students that constructed the Pegasus tokamak and are now operating it. Pegasus is a new fusion experiment in the department.

By working part time for professors in their research labs, many students earn extra income and gain valuable experience with research techniques and equipment. Undergraduate students typically work in nuclear reactor safety, plasma processing, plasma ion implantation, fusion, and superconductivity labs. Students can also become licensed nuclear reactor operators and work in the Nuclear Reactor Lab.

The department is starting a new Honors in Research program, similar to Honors in L&S, but focussing on undergraduate research. Upon admission to the program, students conduct research under the direction of the faculty. If they complete 8 credits of research, including 3 credits for a senior thesis, and meet the GPA requirement, they are awarded Honors in Research. See the department office for Further details. Three EMA and one molecular biology student completed a research trip to NASA, where they conducted zero gravity experiments on one of NASA's "vomit comets', which is a revamped Boeing 707's. By flying parabolic trajectories, the airplane produces a zero-g condition for about 45 seconds, which is followed by a 2-g condition as the plane pulls out of the dive and starts the next parabola. The experiment done by the students was to produce a form of polystyrene by mixing chloroform and methanol. The purpose of the experiment was to determine if mixing of the chemicals in a zero-g environment affected the properties of the polystyrene.