Undergraduate Research Hub
Student involvement in research can be powerful. It helps students work in teams, understand how to solve real-world problems, builds strong faculty-student bonds, and can provoke new ways of engaging with research. That said, these outcomes require a framework and support for students and researchers to flourish.
The QUARTZ Research Hub was designed to support students and researchers, open the door to opportunities, and catalyze ground-breaking discoveries. It is principally composed of four branches:
Internships Extended
This is an opportunity for students to extend their summer internship projects during the school year with the support of university expertise. It couples well with the capstone research course required for our interdisciplinary minor and enables students to intensify their relationship with future employers.
Faculty mentors: Angelina Anani, Brad Ross, John Kemeny
Student Showcases
Student research can be extraordinary but without communicating the outcomes, it will be lackluster. Student showcases help students present their research and connect with industry, the public, and other stakeholders.
QUARTZ Community Hub
The QUARTZ Community is a place for students to network with one another, discover research opportunities, and share valuable resources like how to write an academic paper or find a research advisor.
Student Challenges
Challenge prizes enable students and teams to work together to overcome an issue or challenge while invoking a spirit of competition that can be a powerful motivator for students. The first QUARTZ student challenge is the NGEA challenge below.
If interested in the world of student research, reach out to Caelen Burand for more information and how to get involved.
Featured Competition: Next Generation Explorer Award
As part of the QUARTZ Research Hub’s Student Challenges program, the University of Arizona has established the first U.S. based Next Generation Explorer Award Team. A compliment to the Lowell Program in Economic Geology, the team is tackling our shared issue of new mineral resource deposits becoming increasingly difficult to discover due to factors like ESG concerns, decreasing grades, and mining moving deeper and to more extreme environments.
The competition is inspiring students to connect with one another across disciplines to solve an open-ended problem within mineral resources, primarily, how we can improve our understanding of how to identify economic deposits. Coached by Dr. Hervé Rezeau and Dean Riley of Geosciences and Mining Engineering, respectively, the team has used public information to identify areas of high potential within Uganda and is seeking to help the Ugandan government build the capacity to sustainably and responsibly exploit their mineral resources.
Interested in learning more or participating in future NGEA competitions? Contact team leader Caelen Burand.
Additional Resources for Undergraduate Research
UArizona supports undergraduate as well as graduate research, but finding a lab and/or faculty mentor requires action on the student’s part. See the Undergraduate Research & Inquiry Collaborative website for more information on University Research including how to get started. Here are some additional ideas:
- Look into the research projects currently being conducted through the School and reach out to the faculty in charge for open opportunities to participate. Sometimes these projects work with industry partners. Look for current research projects on this website
- Schedule an individualized 1:1 meeting with one an Undergraduate Research Associate ho has been through the process to help find opportunities in any academic field, on and off-campus.
- Find research positions on Handshake and follow each posting’s application process.
- Research a specific University of Arizona lab and write an email. Search the UA Research Sites or UA Researchers website for ideas. When contacting a lab, explain your grade level, major, and minor and explain why you are interested in the specific lab.
- Instructors are often researchers - talk to your instructors about research opportunities they have available.
If you have your own ideas for research: Great! Find a faculty member who is willing to be the mentor on your research.
