Gabrielle Wood, a first-year Howard University student majoring in chemical engineering, is on a mission to improve the sustainability and life cycles of natural resources and materials. His work in the Materials Initiative for Comprehensive Research Opportunity (MICRO) program has provided him with hands-on experience in many different aspects of research, including MATLAB programming, experimental design, data analysis, figure creation, and scientific writing.
Wood is also one of 10 undergraduate students from 10 U.S. universities to participate in the first MICRO Summit earlier this year. The internship program, developed by MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), first launched in fall 2021. Now in its third year, the program continues to grow, offering even more opportunities for undergraduate students non-MIT campuses – including the MICRO Summit and the expansion of the program to include Northwestern University.
“I think one of the most valuable aspects of the MICRO program is the ability to do long-term research with an experienced professor in materials science and engineering,” says Wood. “My school has limited opportunities for undergraduate research in sustainable polymers, so the MICRO program allowed me to gain valuable experience in this field that I would not otherwise have had.”
Like Wood, Griheydi Garcia, a senior chemistry major at Manhattan College, values exposure to materials science, especially since she doesn’t get to learn as much about the subject at her home institution.
“I learned a lot about crystallography and defects in materials through the MICRO curriculum, mainly through videos,” says Garcia. “The research itself is also very valuable because we can apply what we learn through videos to the research we do remotely.”
Expanding research opportunities
From the beginning, the MICRO program was designed as a rigorous, fully remote education and mentoring program aimed at students from underserved backgrounds interested in pursuing graduate studies in materials science or a related field. Interns are matched with faculty to work on their specific research interests.
Jessica Sandland ’99, PhD ’05, DMSE principal professor and co-founder of MICRO, says that research projects for interns are designed to be work they can do remotely, such as developing a machine learning algorithm or an analysis of data approach.
“It’s important to note that it’s not just about what the program and faculty bring to student interns,” says Sandland, a member of the MIT Digital Learning Lab, a joint program between MIT Open Learning and the Institute’s academic departments. “Students are doing real research and work and creating things of real value. It’s a lot of an exchange.”
Cécile Chazot PhD ’22, now an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, helped establish MICRO at MIT from the beginning. Once at Northwestern, she quickly realized that expanding MICRO to Northwestern would offer even more research opportunities to interns than relying solely on MIT – taking advantage of the university’s strong materials science and engineering department, as well as offering resources for research. of biomaterials through Northwestern’s medical school. The program received funding from 3M and officially launched at Northwestern in fall 2023. Approximately half of MICRO’s interns are now in the MIT program and half are at Northwestern. Wood and Garcia participate in the program via Northwestern.
“By expanding to another school, we were able to have interns work on a much broader range of research projects,” says Chazot. “It has become easier for us to match students with professors and research that matches their interests.”
Building community
The MICRO program received a Higher Education Innovation grant from the Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab, part of MIT Open Learning, to develop an in-person conference. In January 2024, interns visited MIT for three days of presentations, workshops, and campus visits — including a tour of the MIT.nano building — as well as various community-building activities.
“A big part of MICRO is the community,” says Chazot. “One of the highlights of the summit was seeing the students come together.”
The summit also included panel discussions that allowed interns to gain insights and advice from graduate students and professionals. The graduate panel discussion included MIT graduate students Sam Figueroa (mechanical engineering), Isabella Caruso (DMSE), and Eliana Feygin (DMSE). The career panel was led by Chazot and included Jatin Patil PhD ’23, head of product at SiTration; Maureen Reitman ’90, ScD ’93, group vice president and principal engineer at Exponent; Lucas Caretta PhD ’19, assistant professor of engineering at Brown University; Raquel D’Oyen ’90, PhD from Northwestern University and senior engineer at Raytheon; and Ashley Kaiser MS ’19, PhD ’21, senior process engineer at 6K.
Students also had the opportunity to share their work through research presentations. His presentations covered a wide range of topics, including: development of a computer program to calculate solubility parameters for polymers used in textile manufacturing; perform a life cycle analysis of a photonic chip and evaluate its environmental impact compared to a standard silicon microchip; and applying machine learning algorithms to scanning transmission electron microscopy images of CrSBr, a two-dimensional magnetic material.
“The summit was wonderful and the best academic experience I have had as a first-year college student,” says MICRO intern Gabriella La Cour, who is pursuing a double degree in chemistry and biomedical engineering at Spelman College and participates in MICRO through MIT . . “I met a lot of students who were in grades above me… and I learned a little about how to navigate college as a senior.”
“I actually have an extremely close friendship with one of the students and we keep in touch regularly,” adds La Cour. “Professor Chazot gave valuable advice on applications and letters of recommendation that will be helpful when I apply to REUs [Research Experiences for Undergraduates] and graduate schools.”
Looking to the future, MICRO organizers hope to continue to increase the program’s reach.
“We would love to see other schools adopt this model,” says Sandland. “There are a lot of opportunities out there. The more departments, research groups and mentors that get involved with this program, the greater impact it can have.”
