SETI Institute REU
Open To All Scholars, AB540/DACA Not Eligible
Dates: May 31 – August 8, 2026. Participants must be available during the entire 10-week period of the program.
Description:Students will work for 10 weeks in the summer with scientists at the SETI Institute on projects spanning the field of astrobiology from microbiology to planetary geology to observational astronomy. The program includes a week-long field trip to the Hat Creek Radio Astronomy in Northern California and hiking and field exploration at nearby Lassen Volcanic National Park. Students will collaborate on radio astronomy projects and study hydrothermal systems.
Stipend:Selected students will receive a $7000 stipend for the full 10 weeks. In addition, participants will be reimbursed for travel from home or campus to Mountain View, CA.
Application: Applications are due February 2, 2026. To apply to the program, go to the Application Home Page. In addition, you must ask two faculty members (or others familiar with your academic or work background) to submit two letters of reference. Indicate their names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses in your on-line application where appropriate.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants DUE-1741863, AST-1636646, and AST-1836019.
Projects and Mentors:
- Analyzing unexplained features in Saturn’s F Ring, Rob French
- Candidate human landing sites within 10 degrees of Mars’ equator, Pascal Lee
- Characterizing Martian North Polar processes using HiRISE morphology and CRISM mineralogy, Janice Bishop and Lori Fenton
- Details in the devils: Environmental controls of dust devil physical characteristics, Lori Fenton
- Enzymes that capture hydrogen: What is the first step? Steve Cramer and Simon George
- Extremophiles: How do they do it? Steve Cramer and Simon George
- Finding patterns of lights in the sky! Jeff Smith
- Fluvial and hydrothermal studies of the surface of Mars, Virginia Gulick
- From case studies to a galactic population: A unified survey of Giant HII regions, James De Buizer
- How Iron-Sulfur Clusters may have catalyzed the formation of the First Proteins, Simon George
- Modeling outflows from young planet-forming disks, Uma Gorti
- Radiative transfer modeling of trans-neptunian objects: A Machine Learning approach, Cristina Dalle Ore
- Searching for radio technosignatures with the Allen Telescope Array, Sofia Sheikh
- Study of small-scale eruptive events on the Sun using Solar Orbiter, DKIST, and SDO data, Navdeep Panesar and Sanjiv Tiwari
- Studying TESS exoplanet candidate detections, Doug Caldwell
Visit here for all project descriptions.
