"How Natural History Grows"

Academic Opportunities
- Associates & Collaborators
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- - Research Training Program

Volunteers & Volunteering

The Research Training Program is supported, in part through grants provided by:

The Research Training Program gratefully acknowledges the generous support provided by these individuals and organizations. We sincerely appreciate their ongoing commitment to support undergraduate research opportunities at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Additional donation opportunities are available for individuals and organizations to support student participants in the Research Training Program.

Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of Natural History
Research Training Program

A ten-week in-residence summer research and study curriculum exclusively for currently enrolled undergraduate students.

APPLICATION and INFORMATION

Serving the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History community since 1980, the Research Training Program actively facilitates the education, training, and encouragement of the next generation of natural history researchers by hosting in-residence opportunities for students to explore natural history science, and pursue meaningful research projects with Natural History's best research scientists in the biological, geological, and anthropological disciplines. Helping students develop confidence and competence in the research process through active engagement in the overall research process from hypothesis development to communicating results to scientific and general audiences is the cornerstone of this program.

Rooted in the Institution's vast collections - 126 million specimens of plants, animals, insects, fossils, rocks, minerals, meteorites, marine organisms, and human artifacts - and supported by the Museum's internationally acclaimed research community, the Research Training Program:

• Provides a first-time opportunity for undergraduate students, especially underrepresented minorities and persons with disabilities, to be involved in active research participation including students who might not otherwise have the opportunity to engage in research projects such as students from institutions where research opportunities in the natural history sciences are limited.

• Encourages the most talented and highly-motivated young scientists from around the world to pursue research investigations, and careers, in natural history.

• Fosters interdisciplinary and international cooperation to help solve the scientific questions of today, and tomorrow.

• Offers a unique curriculum of opportunities for science exploration, discovery, and hands-on experience by utilizing the Smithsonian research and collections resources.

• Creates future scientists who transmit an appreciation of interdisciplinary natural history studies and the value of scientific collections and collections-based research.

• Shares with the next generation the science of the National Museum of Natural History and the research expertise and skills mastered by our staff.