2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Our Biomedical Engineering NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln typically has multiple individual projects, each consisting of a faculty adviser, graduate student mentor, and visiting undergraduate REU participant. The goals of the REU projects include fostering independent research skills, recruitment of participants from underrepresented groups and/or schools with limited research opportunities, and professional development. A wide variety of faculty affiliations and research expertise, with a general focus in biomedical engineering, expose the REU participants to diverse interdisciplinary research programs. To further increase exposure and provide dedicated mentors from the different focus areas, we conducted a pilot project involving collaboration between two labs to create a wearable ultrasound device during the 2022 summer program. One lab specializes in fabrication methods for creating wearable devices, and the other lab specializes in ultrasound imaging. Two REU participants were involved in the project, with each assigned to a different faculty adviser and graduate student mentor. Throughout the summer program, students had the opportunity to practice their written and oral communication skills during weekly lab meetings, team research meetings, and program-wide REU meetings. The project resulted in the successful design and fabrication of a prototype wearable ultrasound device and unique opportunity to apply for a patent based on the combined technical knowledge of both labs. At the end of the 10-week program, both REU participants presented their research findings as individual poster presentations at a university-wide summer research symposium and at the national Biomedical Engineering Society meeting.

Engaging in a team research project between two labs with different areas of expertise afforded multiple benefits. First, this team research project allowed REU participants to obtain a broad understanding of different aspects of this interdisciplinary research project while focusing on their own area of expertise. This is a skill necessary in many real-world engineering applications. Second, the REU participants were able to develop problem solving skills through interactions with their peers, rather than requiring assistance from their faculty adviser or graduate student mentor whenever a problem was encountered, providing an opportunity to develop students’ self-efficacy related to independent problem-solving in research. Students in past REU cohorts have indicated that learning to be independent researchers is important to them.

In agreement with previous studies, it was found that direct communication between the undergraduate REU participants and mentors/advisers was essential to make progress during the short time frame offered by the 10-week REU program, a discovery which translates to real-world team project settings. However, several challenges arose with this collaborative team research project. One challenge encountered was that while the new communication channel between the REU participants provided many benefits, key information was not always relayed to the graduate mentors or faculty advisers. In addition, the constantly-evolving nature of the research project made it difficult to define each undergraduate’s roles and responsibilities throughout the program. Future collaborative team research projects will contain modifications to address these challenges. A mixture of quantitative and qualitative survey results are presented to support these findings.