MUSER website matches students to research

Duke faculty and students are making it easier for undergraduates to get involved with research on campus.

A new website called MUSER—Matching Undergraduates to Science and Engineering Research—allows students to browse through a list of research projects posted by faculty rather than having to find projects on their own. The site is run by Associate Professor of Biology Sheila Patek with help from undergraduate students. Her team hopes to connect more undergraduates interested in the sciences with mentors and expand MUSER’s reach in its first year of operation.

“At Duke, the tradition is if you’re interested in research, you have to send an email to a professor or try and take a class with them,” she said. “[With MUSER], I feel like students can get a much better sense of research opportunities here at Duke, and even more importantly, see how they can fit their interests.”

Senior Quang Nguyen, president of Duke’s chapter of the American Society for Microbiology, has worked closely with Patek to develop the program. He noted many freshmen currently do not know how to find a research lab to work in.

“The problem is that students receive emails from thousands of resources like the bio department, so we’re trying to streamline the process,” he said.

Patek said her inspiration for MUSER came about while she was working at the University of California Berkeley and discovered a program that allowed students to look across fields and apply for projects. When she moved to University of Massachusetts, she created a similar website there. After beginning work at Duke, however, she again noticed a lack of transparency in connecting undergraduates to research opportunities and decided to try to change that.

She explained that the only way students can currently find a list of available projects—besides emailing professors—is to visit the DukeList website, which continuously advertises projects or miscellaneous jobs that not always research-related or lab-related.

MUSER—which operates three times a year, including during the two bookbagging periods—displays a list of specific project descriptions that research faculty have written, Patek noted. Students can find paid or volunteer positions, explore independent study projects and look for mentors that share similar interests with them.

“It’s like a refined DukeList, targeting students who want to have a meaningful lab experience and need to see concrete opportunities,” she explained.

Nguyen added that another problem MUSER hopes to address is the lack of resource accessibility for disadvantaged students who may not have connections or know how to find research opportunities—which causes research opportunities to be distributed unevenly.

Since its roll-out last year when the site listed between 15 and 20 projects, Patek said that both student and mentor feedback has been positive, although the website’s reach has been small so far. Her team has since moved MUSER to a broader platform and is working on upgrading the website and generating more awareness of the resource among students in the upcoming year.

“Any new thing will take a long time for people to accept and MUSER is not an exception, but it’s very important for students to trust it and use it, so that faculty can see that this actually works and will use it as well,” Nguyen said.

Expanding MUSER’s reach to include research mentors from different departments in science and engineering fields is one of the long-term goals for Patek and Nguyen. They are also currently working with academic advising departments to further establish MUSER’s presence on campus.

“We’re doing baby steps. It’s a big culture step to get [faculty] to post these projects,” Patek said. “It’s small now but I suspect it will to continue to expand and grow.”