Augusta University Center for Undergraduate Research and Scholarship

👩🏻‍🏫 Working alongside our first-class faculty? Kinda chic.

🔎 Learning & exploring your passions outside of the classroom?
Kinda chic.

📝 Building your resume with cool experiential learning opportunities?
Kinda chic.

What else would you add that’s kinda chic about the research experience?

Throwing it back to our Summer Scholars Program (SSP) Symposium last week, celebrating innovation and discoveries made this summer. 🥳🔬 Thank you to our faculty mentors and students for making our 16th year of SSP the best!

Hear from some of our faculty mentors and summer scholars about their summer experience:

https://jagwire.augusta.edu/curs-summer-scholars-program-celebrates-discovery-at-annual-symposium/

Can you tell we’re just a little excited?! 🤪😆 The 2026 Summer Scholars Program cohort is sharing their research tomorrow at the annual program symposium from 4-6 pm in the McKnight Family Hall in the J. Harold Harrison, EdD, Education Commons. We’d love to see you there to support our scholars!

📊👨🏽‍💻Tracking the path from outbreak to endemic.

AUG College of Science & Math’s Dr. Michael Otunuga brought one of our summer scholars on board to his research, looking at mathematical modeling and stochastic epidemiology to predict when diseases like rhinovirus/enterovirus may resurge (or come under control) across U.S. regions. By turning surveillance data into time-to-resurgence forecasts, this research aims to support smarter, adaptive public health decisions.

We look forward to seeing more of our teams work, including Dr. Otunuga’s, at the Summer Scholars Program Symposium this Thursday, July 16, from 4-6 pm in the McKnight Family Hall inside of the J. Harold Harrison Education Commons building.

🦷🔬Exploring the intersection of oral health and cancer research!

This summer, Dental College of Georgia at Augusta University’s Dr. Hope Amm, enlisted the help of one of our summer scholars to investigate how oral bacterial may influence the growth and spread of oral cancers. By researching the effects of Enterococcus faecalis on HPV-positive and HPV-negative cancer cells, this research could help uncover new pathways for future therapies and improve our understanding of cancer progression.

We look forward to seeing more of our Summer Scholars teams’ work, including Dr. Amm’s, at the Summer Scholars Program symposium on July 16!

Shining a light on biomedical research 🔬 Students in Dr. Xiaobing Chen’s Summer Scholars Program project are studying how light-responsive lipids self-assemble and change structure.

These students are gaining valuable experience in sample preparation, instrumental analysis, data interpretation, and scientific communication. AUG College of Science & Math

We look forward to seeing more of our teams projects, including Dr. Chen’s, at next month’s SSP symposium!

Not all research takes place in a lab! AUG Pamplin College’s Dr. Melanie O’Meara is working with her summer scholars team researching the historical avant-garde and the female art/ists of the Bauhaus Stage Workshop and Black Mountain College (BMC) in North Carolina. BMC was an interdisciplinary arts-based college open from 1933-1957.

The scholars in this project will develop and compose scenes for a larger stage production (currently in the works by O’Meara), inspired by the work, methods, and practices of a female artist’s work from BMC.

We can’t wait to see this original production come to life! 🎭

On Wednesday’s (during the summer), we workshop! 👩🏽‍💻👨🏼‍🏫 Today our Summer Scholars Program had a mixed bag of workshop topics to attend, covering topics such as thinking critically, analyzing & interpreting data, and building assertiveness.

Big thanks to ’s Dr. Shiwei Fang, ’s Dr. Andrew Craig-Jones, and ’s Dr. Xiaobing Chen for spending time investing in our scholars! 👏🏼

Scoops and Scores yesterday with our summer scholars was a fun afternoon to give our brains a break and have some fun together. 🎱🎲🍦Here’s to working hard and playing harder!

While some students may be done with school for the summer, other students are continuing their life-changing education in our Summer Scholars Program (SSP)!☀️ SSP officially kicked off on Monday and our scholars participated in their first workshop today.

We can’t wait to see what the summer holds for these budding jagUR’s!