SURFin' Safari—Caltech's Summer Research Wave Rolls On
Thirty-one years ago, Caltech junior Ken Libbrecht was one of 17 students in the Institute's new Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships program, or SURF as it quickly came to be known. At the time a unique program, SURF offered undergraduates the opportunity to pursue original, hands-on research in close collaboration with faculty mentors. The students could choose the area in which to work—a junior committed to chemistry might spend 10 weeks studying earthquakes, or a sophomore undecided about whether she really wanted a post-college career in the laboratory might have a better idea about it after ten weeks of communing with a collection of petri dishes.
Whatever the neophyte researchers elected to do, the whole idea was to give them a sense of how research actually works, from that first crucial step of submitting a proposal to the final formidable one of writing a research paper. Each SURFer received a summer stipend, came to know their faculty advisers as colleagues and friends, and went on to present their research at a SURF symposium modeled on professional conferences. By the time they left Caltech, several had also put their names to one or more published articles while they were still undergraduates. Above all, they had gained a firsthand appreciation of the research experience.
Libbrecht, a physics student, spent his SURF summer working with fellow physicist and Caltech professor Steve Koonin on an aspect of nuclear theory, which resulted in a paper in the highly regarded Physical Review Letters. Now himself a Caltech physics professor for more than a quarter century, Libbrecht is still involved with SURF. But these days, he's the mentor.
Although the basic elements of SURF remain the same, quite a bit has changed since 1979 when 17 students worked with 16 mentors. This year 431 students are working with 261 mentors. The SURFers include 53 undergrads from other schools who have come to Caltech to do research; 46 who are working with scientists at Pasadena's world-renowned Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and a number of Techers who are SURFing offsite at other university campuses, national laboratories, or high-tech R&D companies.
After all this time, SURF boasts many alumni, including current Caltech professors. Two of them, John Dabiri and John Johnson, were both undergraduates at other universities when they took part in SURF, and both say the experience had a significant impact on their careers.
Back in 2000 Dabiri was an undergrad at Princeton, "and Caltech wasn't on my radar at all," he says. "I told one of my professors that I was interested in doing summer research in experimental fluid mechanics, and he suggested the names of a few professors around the U.S., including Mory Gharib, a Caltech professor in aeronautics. I had never been to California (or on a plane!), so this seemed like a good excuse."
Dabiri enjoyed that SURF summer so much that he came back to Caltech for a PhD, with Gharib as his thesis advisor. Now an associate professor of aeronautics and bioengineering, Dabiri says, "My SURF involved measurements of jellyfish swimming. I wasn't thrilled when I first heard about the project because I didn't think biology could be rigorous. But I fell in love with biological fluid mechanics, and I have been doing it ever since."
Thinking he might want to attend Caltech as a graduate student, Johnson, then an undergrad at the University of Missouri-Rolla, saw SURF as "an opportunity to learn more about life at Caltech, build up research experience, and hopefully get a letter of recommendation from a Caltech prof."
Johnson, who did his SURF with Caltech's Laser Interferometry Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) research team, has since moved on to observational astronomy, identifying and studying planets beyond our solar system. He credits his SURF experience with helping him realize that he'd rather work in a smaller research group than in a large consortium. "It taught me that I love research, but that I needed a research question of my own."
Dabiri adds, "I think SURF can be eye-opening for students who are used to classroom learning, where someone else has already solved all of the questions. In research they get to experience the frustration and exhilaration of learning something no one else knows. That certainly was my experience."
When Libbrecht returned to Caltech after receiving his PhD at Princeton, he had no doubt that he wanted to mentor SURF students himself, a sentiment echoed by Dabiri and Johnson. Still, Libbrecht acknowledges that the experience can be a bit bittersweet. Johnson was his SURF student back in '99, and, says Libbrecht, "A person feels old when your SURF students have their own SURF students!"
Stay tuned for future updates on SURF Summer 2010.
Credit: Mike Rogers
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering John Dabiri, shown here with his jellyfish tanks, first became interested in studying the organism while doing a SURF project at Caltech.
Credit: Bob Paz
