June 1 - August 1, 2020Summer Research Program

BUGS/jr.

The research/work conducted by the BUGS/Jrs must (in some way) connect with improving our understanding of the human body/human health. This is a rather broad restriction that does not limit projects in chemistry, methods development, animal models of disease, cinematic investigations of scientific methods & human health topics, mathematical models and computational analysis of human health/disease related topics, etc. However, research programs in geology, plant science, astronomy, and other unrelated fields are not eligible under the BUGS umbrella.

All students are expected to put in ~30+ hours/week (intended to be full time work for the summer)

High school student participants (BUGS Jrs) are paid $800 for the summer. The faculty member is required to contribute half, and the Bridge matches this contribution.

If the undergraduate does not receive one of the independent USC fellowship (like Provost’s, SURF, WiSE etc.), the faculty member will be required to contribute $1500 (which is half) of the undergrad’s summer research stipend, the Bridstipend, the Bridge will match this amount to bring the student’s total summer stipend to $3000.

We encourage faculty mentors to also engage graduate or postdoctoral students from their labs as co-mentors of the BUGS/Jrs.

Faculty must release the students from their research duties to participate in the weekly BUGS program events (currently planned for Thursday afternoons).

The undergrad program is from Monday 06/01 - Saturday 08/01 (the finale symposium is on this Saturday).

There is not a limit to the number of BUGS/Jrs from any particular mentor’s lab.

Any active USC faculty member is eligible to mentor a Bridge UnderGraduate Science (BUGS) student at either the undergrad (BUGS) or high school level (BUGS Jr).(BUGS Jr).