This year's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program comprises 43 undergraduates, representing nine different colleges and 18 different departments.  Eighteen of the SURF participants are members of The Honors College.  

The SURF program provides a $3500 stipend to undergraduates conducting a full-time summer research project under the mentorship of a UH faculty member.  In addition to conducting research, SURF students also attend a weekly Brown Bag Lecture Series, which takes place each Wednesday at noon.  Lecture topics include considering research ethics, applying to graduate and professional school, and developing a personal statement. In addition, professors Dan Price, from Honors, and Hanadi Rifai, from Civil and Environmental Engineering, will present on their ongoing research projects. Ultimately, SURF students will present their research posters at Undergraduate Research Day 2010, taking place on Thursday, October 14th at 4 p.m. in the Rockwell Pavilion.

Some of the Honors SURF students and their projects include Angela Abouassi, who is performing genetic sequencing to promote early detection of heart defects in infants; Matthew Dickenson, who plans to explore instances of leadership transition in terrorist groups through multivariate regression analyses to determine the effects of targeted removal policies; Yuval Klein, who is comparing physiological and performance responses of soldiers carrying backpacks during incremental treadmill protocols to aid military units in load carrying techniques; Rajeshwar Podali who is researching how Ima Hogg’s vision of the past informed her perspective on Houston and Texas; Krystafer Redden, who is investigating nature of Spartan regime and issues related to gender, liberty, political power, and civic life for Spartan women; Karen Taniguchi, who is synthesizing nanostructures to examine new type of biocompatible magnetic nanowires for multiple functionalities in MRI imaging, drug delivery, tissue engineering and cancer treatment, and Lindsey Slavin, who is studying public art in Houston, and designing her own original work in response to her findings.