NSF REU Site: Natural History Research Experiences

02/08/2020

Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History

Yes, I'm the crazy REU co-Director....

Smithsonian Geologist Liz Cottrell wants to answer your questions about volcanoes, camping, and life!

02/08/2020

Applications are in! We'll notify our finalist pool by early March and notify all applicants of their status by April 1st.

12/16/2019

Home - NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates

We are accepting applications now through January 22nd through the NSF’s REU Common Application. Please apply by going to https://www.nsfreu.org/ and searching for the site name "NHRE." A complete application will consist of (1) the application, available December 1st (2) unofficial college transcripts and (3) two letters of recommendation. All application materials will be due January 22nd.

About the Program The Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program supports active research participation by undergraduate students in the study areas funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). REU Sites meaningfully engage groups of about 10 to 12 students in ongoing research program...

12/18/2018

Natural History Research Experiences | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

NHRE has posted the 2019 application information for the summer of 2019: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/natural-history-research-experiences

A summer research internship for undergraduates funded by the National Science Foundation (REU Site, EAR-1062692, OCE-1560088)

06/18/2018

Botanical Illustration workshop with Alice Tangerini.

06/04/2018

Intern tour of the Mammal Department at the Museum of Natural History.

06/04/2018

2018 NHRE interns on the tour of the Smithsonian Bird Divison. Talons of a Harpy Eagle (Harpia harpyja) in the jar!

04/17/2018

Photography

In the fall of 2018, former Natural History Research Experiences intern G. Maris Jones will begin a joint PhD in Anthropology and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She plans to do graduate work at the intersection of race, culture, climate change, and government policy. Maris's current research is focused on climate change vulnerability and adaptation pratices of communities in coastal regions and small island states of the African diaspora. Through her work, she hopes to create a living archive of narratives of climate-displaced individuals and complicate the discourse around resiliency with accounts of community resistance. Recently, Maris was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and was named an alternate for the Ford Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellowship. For her NSF grant, Maris proposed a comparative study of Post-Katrina New Orleans, Louisiana and Post-Maria San Juan, Puerto Rico to investigate the efforts of the "second disaster", or the cultural and social uprooting that occurs when communities are displaced following an extreme weather event, on diasporic African communities. Through this research, Maris aims to understand the ways these communities utilize cultural production and embody traditional ecological knowledge inherited from their ancestors as a survival pratice when faced with insufficient government assistance in the wake of a disaster. She is particularly interested in the ways such practices allow marginalized communities to resist the subjugation and erasure of their bodies by the state. Learn more about her previous work at www.gmarisjones.com

03/16/2018

National Science Foundation (NSF)

Have you heard about NSF's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program? It gives undergrads unique opportunities to work on research projects with experienced faculty. http://bit.ly/REU_NSF

"At Smithsonian's NHRE REU site, I attempted to extract DNA from plant phytoliths. I used corn and squash phytoliths to test the procedure and gain information about plant domestication."-Andrea Marroquin, Northern Kentucky University.

Photo credit: James Di Loreto, Smithsonian

01/10/2018

Natural History Research Experiences

We are accepting applications for the 2018 NHRE program. Please go to http://www.naturalhistory.si.edu/nhre/
The application deadline is January 24th.

09/05/2017

2017 NHRE Intern Museum Outreach Day.

07/13/2017

Independent Research: Stories of setting off on our own

An article in Story Collider featuring 2013 NHRE intern Frank Stabile.
https://www.storycollider.org/stories/2017/6/30/independent-research-stories-of-setting-off-on-our-own

Frank Stabile struggles with compulsive behavior as a young scientist, and Deena Walker's dreams of a science career are hindered by her relationship.

07/10/2017

Field trip to Calvert Cliffs to find shark teeth!

06/09/2017

Class of 2017

03/20/2017

NHRE News update. 2013 intern's Chris Brendel, Raquel Bryant, and Alexandra Kralick all received GRFP NSF grants this year. 2015 intern Ashly Romero received an honorable mention.

11/26/2016

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences -- Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences: Northwestern University

PhD Opportunities in Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern University. Webpage: http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/

11/11/2016

naturalhistory.si.edu

The Natural History Research Experiences (NHRE) intern program recently posted the new 2017 application information on the website http://mnh.si.edu/NHRE/ The application deadline is January 25th 2017. All application documents can be downloaded from the website.

10/17/2016

2010 NHRE interns Matthew Nielsen and Gregory Stull received their PhD's this past summer!

10/17/2016

ASLO 2017 Ocean Sciences Meeting: Mountains to the Sea

2016 intern Nadège Aoki has been nominated to attend the Aquatic Science Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii February 26-March 3.
http://www.sgmeet.com/aslo/honolulu2017/default.asp

ASLO 2017 Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Mountains to the Sea, 26 February-3 March 2017, Hawaii Convention Center, Honolulu, Hawaii. Sponsored by the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.

08/18/2016

2016 NHRE Interns

08/04/2016

2016 NHRE Intern Botany/Entomology Field Trip to the National Arboretum.

06/10/2016

NHRE Class of 2016. Photo credit:Jim Di Loreto, Smithsonian.

05/16/2016

2015 NHRE Intern Johanna Obenda with her NHRE poster at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists conference in April 2016.

02/08/2016

Was Frozen Mammoth or Giant Ground Sloth Served for Dinner at The Explorers Club?

2010 NHRE intern Jessica Glass is a co-author of a new paper just out in #PLOSONE.

Accounts of woolly mammoths ( Mammuthus primigenius ) preserved so well in ice that their meat is still edible have a long history of intriguing the public and influencing paleontological thought on Quaternary extinctions and climate, with some scientists resorting to catastrophism to explain the in…

01/04/2016

www.mnh.si.edu

The 2016 NHRE summer program application information has been posted on the NHRE website http://www.mnh.si.edu/NHRE/ Application deadline is January 26th.

12/30/2015

Department of Entomology, NMNH, Smithsonian Institution

Department of Entomology, NMNH, Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian entomologist Dr. Terry Erwin is a co-author of a recent paper that introduces a new model for predicting the effects of climate change on the Amazon rainforest. Unlike old models, which assume all tree species will respond in the same way to climate change, the new model takes into account the vast biodiversity of the Amazon to identify species that will be more sensitive to environmental stress than others.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/12/28/this-model-gives-us-the-best-look-yet-at-how-amazon-forests-will-react-to-climate-change/

12/28/2015

2015 NHRE Intern Morgan Rondinelli at the Entomological Society of America's annual meeting. Morgan won the President's Prize-1st place, student poster competition for her NHRE poster.

12/21/2015

2015 NHRE intern Brianna Marshall presenting her NHRE Poster at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meetings in San Francisco.

12/07/2015

Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History

This image shows that plants in an area can change dramatically during global warming. Smithsonian Paleobiologist Scott Wing collected these fossil leaves—and thousands more—in Wyoming. It’s part of his effort to understand the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)—an abrupt global warming event that occurred about 56 million years ago.

The PETM was kicked off by release into the atmosphere of an amount of carbon roughly equivalent to today’s entire fossil fuel reservoir. In a few thousand years, the global temperature rose about 10˚ F (red line). It took more than a hundred thousand years to return to normal.

Wing’s plant fossils show that as the climate in Wyoming warmed it also became seasonally quite dry, resulting in extinction of some species, local extirpation of most, and the spread of dry-tolerant plants into this region. The PETM is widely recognized by scientists as the best geological analog for the human-induced global warming that is happening now.

Watch this episode of Smithsonian Science How to learn more about what fossil leaves can tell us about climate change. http://qrius.si.edu/Past-Present-Climate-Change-Webcast

11/29/2015

The Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program | Smithsonian Fellowships and Internships

The Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program | Smithsonian Fellowships and Internships

The Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program Applications for the 2016 Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program Are Now OPEN. Background: The Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program is the Smithsonian Institution’s centrally-funded flagship fellowship program. SI Fellowships are awarded annu…

10/26/2015

Molecular Phylogeny Supports Repeated Adaptation to Burrowing within Small-Eared Shrews Genus of...

A Coauthorship by two NHRE Alumni: Sunjana Supekar (2010) and Sean Boaglio (2011).

Small-eared shrews of the New World genus Cryptotis (Eulipotyphla, Soricidae) comprise at least 42 species that traditionally have been partitioned among four or more species groups based on morphological characters. The Cryptotis mexicana species group is of particular interest, because its member…

10/07/2015

Space Rock Hunters Are About to Invade Antarctica

Cari Corrigan has been a wonderful mentor for many NHRE interns. Great to see her featured in this article.

Scientists with the ANSMET program will endure six weeks near the South Pole during an annual field trip to find meteorites

09/22/2015

Image of the Day

Image of the Day

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)

09/17/2015

2015 Closing NHRE ceremony.
From left to right, Sierra Kaufman, Brianna Marshall, and Olivia VanDamme

08/25/2015

Walking Boldly: Brianna Marshall

Walking Boldly: Brianna Marshall

August 20, 2015 | Matt Kucinski, Lynn Rosendale Brianna Marshall interned this summer at the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy: Jim DiLoreto This summer, we are following grads from the Class of 2015 as they continue their journeys around the corner and across the globe. Followi…