Due to COVID-19, I was delayed with meeting deadlines on time as I didn't have access to the lab. However, this time was not wasted as I began reading more articles on my topic, and the more papers I read I was able to understand the complex neurophysiology around CBD.  This was my first time learning a new topic by only read scientific articles instead of learning through a lecture. It was such an amazing experience! It boosted my confidence as a scientist and encouraged me to write a thesis on my findings.

Despite the fact that we had to work entirely remotely, the project proceeded almost exactly to plan.  We have achieved some very exciting results.  My mentee will be a co-author on a paper that I will be submitting to Science this month, and they will be leading their own paper this year!

While it would have been nice to collaborate in-person, we had success using Zoom for our group meetings. We look forward to presenting the results of her project at the ATOC Student Poster Conference.

Although my mentee’s wet lab and bench science was curtailed due to COVID19, their scientific and academic progress was very impressive!

This was my first experience with UROP and I would have loved to have in-person mentorship to my mentee, but Zoom worked well for our meetings and allowed my mentee to interact with the group.

COVID-19 gave us the opportunity to explore the relevant research in our field through writing a review paper.  I was blown away by the student's ability to manage their time and think independently.  Together, we thought of new directions for the research to be performed next year.  I will be involving my students in decision-making and creative thinking more in the future as a result of this summer's UROP experience!

I learned a lot more than I thought I would when I found out I would only be doing remote work. Given the current circumstances, I believe I was able to make the most out of my summer with my lab and UROP to guide me even though the pandemic halted any in person work.

This is the second UROP we've had funded, and has been a boon with scaling back of research due to COVID19. Without these grants, we would not be able to fund undergraduates in our lab since most of our funding cannot pay for peoples' salaries.

I was happy about UROP’s flexibility with the public health crisis.  My students were worried about the future of the research and our research group if they were halted over the summer. We were appreciative of the opportunity to keep working!

Despite COVID closing everything down, I am grateful I was able to continue my research at home. Working mostly independently on this project really helped me gain confidence in myself as an engineer and researcher.

I am very thankful for the opportunity to spend this summer doing research. I feel that I was able to accomplish a significant amount of research and have a much better understanding of how to manage myself in an academic environment.

When everything was moved to remote work, I was overwhelmed with how much progress I was able to do and we as a team were able to do—despite being thousands of miles away from each other. I loved the work and research that we were doing genuinely enjoyed diving deep into the research papers to find the answers I was looking for.