Research Experiences for Undergraduates | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program is a long-running federal funding opportunity designed to get undergraduate students directly involved in real research. The core idea is hands-on participation: students do meaningful research work alongside faculty and other researchers, either by joining existing NSF-supported projects or by participating in projects created specifically for the REU program. REU activities can be hosted in essentially any research area NSF funds, spanning engineering, math and physical sciences, geosciences, computer and information science, biological sciences, social and behavioral sciences, education research, polar programs, international science and engineering, cyberinfrastructure, and EPSCoR-related efforts. The goal is to build research skills, expose students to the culture and practice of research, and strengthen the pipeline into graduate study and research careers.

The solicitation supports two main ways of funding undergraduate research experiences. First, REU Sites are standalone projects funded through an independent proposal to create and run a structured program that brings a group of undergraduates into a coherent research experience. A Site can be housed within a single department or discipline, or it can be interdisciplinary or multi-department as long as it has a clear, unifying intellectual theme. International components are explicitly welcomed, meaning a Site can incorporate cross-border collaboration or research activities with an international dimension when appropriate. There is also a stated partnership with the Department of Defense that supports REU Sites in research areas that are relevant to DoD interests, which can be important for proposers working in fields aligned with national security or defense-related technology needs. Second, REU Supplements provide a more flexible option: instead of creating a full Site, an existing NSF award can request additional funds to support one or more undergraduates to work on that already-funded research. Supplements can be requested for ongoing NSF-funded projects, and they can also be proposed as part of a new or renewal NSF proposal or cooperative agreement, making them a way to build undergraduate participation directly into standard NSF research awards.

A key eligibility rule applies to the student participants: undergraduates supported through either REU Sites or REU Supplements must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents of the United States or its possessions. Another practical point is that students do not apply to NSF directly for REU participation. Instead, they apply to individual REU Sites, and NSF maintains a public directory of active Sites so students can find programs and follow each Site's application instructions and deadlines. In other words, NSF funds the institutions and projects, while students apply to the local program that runs the research experience.

From an administrative standpoint, this opportunity is categorized as a discretionary program using the cooperative agreement funding instrument, with an estimated total funding level of about $67.7 million and an expected number of awards around 1,850. The listed award sizes span a wide range, with a floor of $5,000 and a ceiling of $400,000, reflecting both small supplement requests and larger multi-student Site awards. The solicitation indicates no cost-sharing or matching requirement, which generally means proposers are not required to contribute institutional funds as a condition of receiving an award (though voluntary contributions can sometimes appear in proposals depending on program norms and project design).

The solicitation also lays out proposal timing patterns for REU Sites. In the materials provided, the deadlines include a special schedule for projects requiring access to Antarctica, with a deadline on the first Friday in June (with annual repetition), while all other REU Site proposals follow an annual deadline on the fourth Wednesday in August. This split reflects the extra logistical planning needed for Antarctic research. For the cycle referenced in the source, dates included June 1, 2012 for Antarctica-access proposals and August 22, 2012 for all other Site proposals, with the same annual pattern thereafter.

For proposal leadership and management, the program expects clear accountability. For REU Site proposals, one individual should be named as Principal Investigator and is responsible for overall oversight of the award. One additional person may be named as a Co-Principal Investigator if operating the Site truly involves shared responsibility. Other research mentors or supervisors are generally listed as senior personnel rather than as additional co-PIs. In unusual situations, some NSF units may allow additional co-PIs after award if there is an exceptional justification for distributing management responsibilities, but the default structure is intentionally streamlined.

The opportunity is published as NSF Publication 09-598 (Funding Opportunity Number 09-598), and support contacts are oriented toward technical help with accessing or linking to the announcement, including NSF's Grants.gov support email. Overall, the REU program is essentially NSF's primary mechanism for funding structured undergraduate research opportunities at scale, either through dedicated summer-style (or academic-year) Site programs or through targeted supplements that embed undergraduate researchers into existing NSF-funded science and engineering work.

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