Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Program

SURE/Experience Plus Undergraduate Research Program

The Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program is designed to guide undergraduate students in the practice of research and expose them to potential educational and research-oriented career paths. This is accomplished through faculty mentorship and training while students participate in a faculty member’s research or scholarly project.

Faculty members (not students) submit a project application that identifies a student researcher. If awarded, the student researcher receives a summer stipend of $3,200 while they work on the SURE project (this work does not count for academic credit). Students generally work 15-20 hours per week over the course of 8-12 weeks in the summer. Students are also required to attend professional development sessions throughout the summer and present their work at the SURE Showcase in the fall.

Through this experience, the program aims to provide students with the opportunity to participate in individual research projects; to learn about the life of an active researcher; to learn about research-oriented careers; and to develop a long-term mentor relationship.

SURE 2025

Sena Alenzi accepting 1st place at the SURE Showcase — **SURE 2024 researcher Sena Alenzi**
**receives 1st place at the SURE Showcase**

Faculty: The SURE 2025 application is now closed.

Students: Interested in participating? Talk to a faculty member you're interested in doing research with summer 2025 through the SURE program. The faculty member can then submit an application for SURE and identify you as the student researcher.

In some cases, faculty are unable to identify student researchers for their SURE project, so if you are interested in being matched with a faculty member, please contact [email protected].

Students who are interested in participating need to be current undergraduate UM-Dearborn students who will graduate December 2025 or later and have not participated in a previous SURE program.

Visit the Past Projects page for information about all previous SURE projects.

Students who were credited in publications for their work on SURE projects:

SURE 2024

A. A. Farhat, Y. A. Almahdi, F. Z. Alshuhani, B. Xhabija, Morphological and Optical Profiling of Melanocytes and SK-MEL-28 Melanoma Cells Via Digital Holographic Microscopy and Quantitative Phase Imaging. Adv. Biology 2024, 2400346. https://doi.org/10.1002/adbi.202400346

SURE 2023

D. Johnson, O. Pellegrini, R. Sauer, J. Schall, K. Mottakin and Z. Song, "Extending Automotive Vision System by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles," 2023 IEEE International Conference on Mobility, Operations, Services and Technologies (MOST), Detroit, MI, USA, 2023, pp. 223-224, doi: 10.1109/MOST57249.2023.00031.
Hachem, Z., Hadrian, C., Aldbaisi, L., Alkaabi, M., Wan, L. Q., & Fan, J. (2024). Asymmetrical positioning of cell organelles reflects the cell chirality of mouse myoblast cells. APL Bioengineering, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0189401
Pagnucco G, Overfield D, Chamlee Y, Shuler C, Kassem A, Opara S, Najaf H, Abbas L, Coutinho O, Fortuna A, Sulaiman F, Farinas J, Schittenhelm R, Catalfano B, Li X, Tiquia-Arashiro SM. Metal tolerance and biosorption capacities of bacterial strains isolated from an urban watershed. Front Microbiol. 2023 Oct 23;14:1278886. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1278886
Sampson, N., Price, C., Almaleky, A., Reda, Z., & Reda, Y. (2024). Lessons from the Environmental Health Research-to-Action Academy. Environmental Justice. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2024.0041
Susko, D.J., and Jamil, A.N. 2024. Effects of Seed Number and Fruit and Seed Packaging on Dispersal Potential of the Multiseeded Fruits of Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis). International Journal of Plant Sciences 185:503-508.

SURE 2022

Perla et al. Acidic pH of Early Endosomes Governs SARS-CoV-2 Transport in Host Cells Fares, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Volume 0, Issue 0, 108144 10.1016/j.jbc.2024.108144
DiDonato, StuartP. and Antonios M. Koumpias. 2024. “Effects of property value assessment limit portability on migration outflows.” Public Budgeting & Finance. 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/pbaf.12373
Faulkner MB, Rizk M, Bazzi Z, Dysko RC, Zhang Z. Sex-specific effects of buprenorphine on endoplasmic reticulum stress, abnormal protein accumulation, and cell loss after pediatric mild traumatic brain injury in mice. Neurotrauma Reports 2023:4(1):573-585. doi: 10.1089/neur.2023.0051
Marincean, S., Nichols, D. L., & Benore, M. A. (2023). Riboflavin interactions with the chicken isolated carrier protein. Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters, 96, 129529. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bmcl.2023.129529

SURE 2021

Hang, B., Jassem, E., Mohammed, H., Wan, L. Q., Herschkowitz, J. I., & Fan, J. (2022). Interacting with tumor cells weakens the intrinsic clockwise chirality of endothelial cells. APL Bioengineering, 6(4), 046107. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0115827
Hogan, J., Salo, A., Rzig, D. E., Hassan, F., & Maxim, B. (2022). Analyzing Performance Issues of Virtual Reality Applications. arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.02013. doi:10.48550/arxiv.2211.02013
Napieralski, J., Sulich, C., Taylor, A., & Draus, P. (2022). Mapping the link between outdoor water footprint and social vulnerability in Metro Phoenix, AZ (USA). Landscape and Urban Planning, 226, 104498. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104498

SURE 2020

Song, Z., Rowader, O., Li, Z., Tello, M., & Tilevich, E. (2022). Quality of Information Matters: Recommending Web Services for Performance and Utility. 2022 IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom), 41–48. https://doi.org/10.1109/CloudCom55334.2022.00016

SURE 2019

Nasser, M., Wu, Y., Danaoui, Y., & Ghosh, G. (2019). Engineering microenvironments towards harnessing pro-angiogenic potential of mesenchymal stem cells. Materials Science and Engineering: C, 102, 75–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msec.2019.04.030
Sampson, N., Price, C., Alwishah, K., Saleh, I., Mahdi, A., Mozip, A., Luqman, S., Archambault, D., Gleicher, S., Norwood, D., Almaklani A.B., Leonard, N, Arouche, A., Tariq, M., Reda, Z. (2021). Building youth capacity to address environmental health and justice concerns in Dearborn, MI. Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action, 15(3):401-410. doi.org/10.1353/cpr.2021.0041.

SURE 2018

Alkhazi, B., Abid, C., Kessentini, M., & Wimmer, M. (2020). On the value of quality attributes for refactoring ATL model transformations: A multi-objective approach. Information and Software Technology, 120, 106243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2019.106243
Bazzi, K., Meka, V. M., Rathi, A., & Jayaraman, T. V. (2019). Influence of temperature on the magnetic properties of nanostructured Fe-49 wt.% Co-2 wt.% V alloy powder synthesized by mechanically milling pre-alloyed gas-atomized powder. Materials Chemistry and Physics, 227, 36–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matchemphys.2019.01.044
Doctrove, Q. A., Alsafi, Z., Smith, S. R., & Benore, M. A. (2019). Improved Purification of Apo and Holo Riboflavin Binding Protein from Chicken and Turkey Egg Yolk. The FASEB Journal, 33(S1), 472.2-472.2. https://doi.org/10.1096/fasebj.2019.33.1_supplement.472.2
Rebai, S., Sghaier, O., Alizadeh, V., Kessentini, M., & Chater, M. (2019). Interactive Refactoring Documentation Bot. 2019 19th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM), 152–162. https://doi.org/10.1109/SCAM.2019.00026