Undergraduate Research and Extension Experiences (REEU) Summer Research Program

• Are you interested in the fields of Plant and Soil Science, Food Systems, Entomology, Plant Pathology, Sustainability or Global Change? 
• Do you have little to no prior research experience?
• Are you thinking of pursuing graduate school or a professional career in STEM, and want to know more about what your options are?
• Are you interested in learning about data analysis, sampling methods, and how to conduct field and lab work?
• Are you from a university, college or community college with limited research opportunities?
• Are you interested in becoming part of a close-knit community of diverse researchers and building your academic network?

If you answered YES! to any of these questions, the SOAR-REEU experience is probably right for you!

Our program is designed to give you an introduction to developing and executing a research project as an undergraduate student. No prior field work experience, lab experience, or stats courses are required to apply. 

Our program goal is to help you understand what “doing research” really means, and to help give you the knowledge, resources, and support to achieve your STEM career goals (and maybe even help you identify what those goals might be!). 

We are excited to see your application!

• Application dates: November 15, 2025–January 31, 2026
• Application review: February 1–February 28, 2026
• Admission decisions: March 1–March 31, 2026
• Program dates: June 1–August 7, 2026
• Expected arrival and departure: May 31 and August 8, 2026, respectively
   

SOAR_REEU Program - Expectations and Weekly Timeline

SOAR-REEU UMN Code of Conduct

If you need an accommodation of any kind that is not supported in what we have provided, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Dates:

This program is 10 weeks long and will run from June 1 – August 7, 2026. Students are expected to arrive on-site by 5 p.m. Sunday, May 31st and depart Saturday, August 8th.

Hours:

This is a full-time (40+hrs/week) research experience.  Specific hours will be arranged with your research mentor. No additional employment is permitted as we want students to be fully present and engaged with their SOAR-REEU experience.

Financial Support:

• $5000 stipend + room & board at The University of Minnesota Pioneer Hall. Lunch is provided in the dining hall and will be brought to the St. Paul Campus in a to-go container daily.
• Dorms are double-occupancy and come equipped with microwaves and mini refrigerators.
• Up to $500 to cover transportation to and from Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport (MSP). If you will have a car on campus, parking is available at an additional cost. If you feel you have an extenuating travel circumstance (such as travel from Puerto Rico), we will work with you to find reasonable flight accomodations.
• Housing, meals, and Boynton Health extended (supplemental) coverage provided.
• All students must carry private health insurance coverage, or will be required to purchase the U of M Student Health Benefit Plan 
   

Learning Plan and Professional Development:

REEUs will work with their mentor to create a custom learning plan and work to develop an independent research project, collaborate on writing research objectives, attend weekly professional development seminars, develop your personal statement about your research, write a research abstract and present a professional research poster at the UMN Summer Undergraduate Research Expo, plus write a blog post about your research experience.

Our weekly professional development seminars cover topics like science communication and personal statements, developing a research poster, crafting a CV/Resume, and more. We also host grad panels and career panels to help students learn about a variety of STEM career options.

Field Trips and Activities:

Each week students will participate in a field trip or related food system experiences, including visits to incubator farms to support farmers who have faced barriers to entry to agriculture, urban farms, food hubs and a research field day, resulting in enhanced learning about food system sustainability! SOAR students will also have the opportunity to participate in additional field trips with other summer research programs, including amusement parks, theater performances, and a grand finale riverboat tour down the mighty Mississippi! The Twin Cities region of Minneapolis-Saint Paul is a vibrant hub of activity to suit all interests and we look forward to sharing it with you!

Clark Lab: The Clark lab studies fruit breeding with a focus on apples, blueberries, and a few other crops like Rubus and kiwiberry. We are interested in studying ploidy, or the copy number of chromosomes in some of these species as this can be a barrier to breeding between 2x (diploid) and 4x (tetraploid). Techniques may include flow cytometry and root tip squashes. Daily work may include watering and caring for greenhouse plants, assistance in pollinations, and other propagation.

PI: Dr. Matthew Clark - [email protected]

Eylands Lab: The Eylands lab focuses on current and evolving challenges facing indoor growers locally, nationally, and internationally. Our research questions are framed to isolate and understand the interacting effects of environmental factors and cultural practices on plant physiology, morphology, and biochemistry. Our work often merges with growing technology fronts outside the lab's traditional paradigm. The student in our lab will be working on an applied agrivoltaics project, combining the use of solar energy for plant production as well as energy generation. Time will be spent on an off-campus solar research site planting and maintaining outdoor growth plots, collecting data, and forging outreach relationships. 

PI: Dr. Nathan Eylands - [email protected]

Grossman Lab: The Grossman lab explores how to improve plant-soil-microbe relationships on agroecological and organic vegetable farms, to develop sustainable food production systems. A central thread that connects much of our work is the examination of legume cover crops and associated soil microbes to help maintain landscape diversity and tighten nutrient cycling. Current projects investigate the use of cover crop legumes to enhance organic hoop house (high tunnel) soil sustainability and creation of a soil management plan with immigrant farmer advocacy organizations in the Twin Cities. Prospective REEU students should have an interest in soil ecology and farming systems.

PI: Dr. Julie Grossman - [email protected]

McCaghey Lab: Research in the McCaghey Lab centers on understanding the ecology and biology of soil-associated fungi and oomycetes to improve crop disease management. Potential REEU projects would investigate the relationship between deficit irrigation and plant disease occurance or would investigate the interaction of crop managment practices with a disease that is anticpated to become more problematic with a warming climate. Research projects would include a mixture of field and laboratory activities including soil and plant sampling, culture work, and molecular methods in microbial identification.

PI: Dr. Megan McCaghey - [email protected]

Miller Lab: The Miller lab focuses on improving the resilience of managed landscapes by working to expand the plant palette with species capable of tolerating extreme conditions and by overcoming obstacles in the plant production pipeline. Students will gain hands on experience with a variety of research projects in the field and greenhouse as well as routine opportunities to practice horticulture in the Learning Garden for Horticultural Science, a small public garden on the St. Paul campus. Activities include planting, watering, weeding, pruning, and overall management of horticultural landscapes. Students will be expected to work with a team of horticulturists outdoors or in a greenhouse with some lab opportunities.

PI: Dr. Brandon Miller - [email protected]

Petrella Lab: The Petrella lab focuses on turfgrass responses to abiotic stress, in particular, responses to light (shade, spectral quality, and high light stress). Our work entails devloping improved screening methods and improved phenotyping to better quantify improved germplasm. Plants that we select are used for UMN turfgrass breeding program and for more defined experiments to understand the physiological basis of stress tolerance. The student in our lab will learn techniques in experimental design, learn methods to measure carbon fixation and allocation, and analysis of these data.

PI: Dr. Dominic Petrella - [email protected]

Rogers Lab: The Rogers lab specializes in addressing production challenges in fruit and vegetable crops, combining plant science and entomology expertise. Our current research is centered on managing invasive insect species and tailoring horticultural production techniques for small-scale and urban agricultural systems. Students should expect to spend approximately 75% of the day doing research tasks in the field and 25% of time doing lab work.

PI: Dr. Mary Rogers - [email protected]

Runck Lab: The Runck lab specializes in the development of end-to-end sensing and spatial modeling systems working across hardware, firmware, software, and modeling. Student projects in the lab can focus on any aspect of sensing, robotics, or data science. Interested students should have a background in tinkering with electronics and data, but need not be experts in any specific area of digital technology.

PI: Dr. Bryan Runck - [email protected]

Shannon Lab: The Shannon lab studies potato genetics genomics and breeding. Our work ranges from developing new potato varieties for Minnesota growers to investigating potato domestication and evolution. The student in our lab will do a combination of field/greenhouse work and data analysis in R.

PI: Dr. Laura Shannon - [email protected]

Wannemuehler lab: The Wannemuehler lab conducts applied research aimed at developing and characterizing improved woody ornamental plants capable of thriving in cold climates. Potential internship projects would combine hands-on experience in phenotyping for traits like flowering time or cold hardiness and learning molecular techniques used in plant breeding. This is an opportunity to contribute to the fundamental science underlying the selection of robust plants for the commercial landscape industry.

PI: Dr. Seth Wannemuehler - [email protected]