The environment that surrounds you greatly impacts your health. Whether from natural or man-made sources, there are myriad factors that can affect your health from the air you breath to the food you eat to the water you drink. The complexity of your environmental ‘home’ is immense, and understanding how everything that surrounds you can potentially interact with you and affect your well-being from birth until old age is equally complex. It is therefore not surprising that research in the environmental health sciences is highly multidisciplinary, with expertise required across a broad base of knowledge disciplines all focused toward the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) mission to ‘discover how the environment affects people in order to promote healthier lives’.
The University of Tennessee is excited to welcome undergraduate students to our campus each summer for a ten week, highly immersive hands-on research internship in one of our many state-of-the-art laboratories to investigate the various aspects of the environmental health sciences. We offer a unique research environment that promises to challenge you, build your laboratory skills, and foster your growth as a research scientist.
Research disciplines available for summer research projects span biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, microbiology, neurobiology, chemical and biomolecular engineering, clinical and basic animal sciences, mechanical and biomedical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, and environmental biotechnology. Please visit our research mentor page for more details on available research areas.
Program dates: Last week of May through the first week of August.
Click HERE to apply for our 2023 program!
Program highlights:
- 10-week research training opportunity
- Conduct individual research projects in one of ~20 faculty laboratories at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville
- Weekly academic and professional development programs
- $3,700 stipend
- Paid on-campus housing
- Travel costs reimbursed
Who should apply?
- Highly motivated undergraduate students interested in pursuing challenging laboratory research activities in the environmental health science disciplines
- Undergraduate students contemplating graduate school and the achievement of an advanced degree
- No prior research experience is required
- United States citizens or permanent residents (required by NIH guidelines)
- Underrepresented groups, those who are the first generation in their families to attend college, and those of economic disadvantage are highly encouraged to apply
