Please reference the chart below for opportunities offered through the Work-Study Research Assistant Program for the 2021-2022 academic year. Follow the link in the Job Posting column to access the position listing and apply on JobX. Only applications from undergraduate students with work-study awards will be considered. Please note that the opportunities denoted with the First Generation image are offered by faculty members who themselves identify as first generation (neither parent completed a four-year degree); first generation students are particularly encouraged to consider these positions and apply to those that align with their skills and interests.
| Job Posting | Faculty Name | Department | Brief Position Description | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
11568 |
Roman Shrestha | Allied Health Sciences | My research is primarily centered on the interface of HIV, substance use, and mobile technology (mHealth) specifically focused on HIV prevention and treatment issues. My current projects include NIH-funded grants, both domestically and internationally: a) Domestic projects – Focus on HIV and substance use prevention in people who use drugs; b) International projects – Emphasize on using mHealth technologies (e.g., app) to promote HIV testing and linkage to HIV prevention services among sexually diverse group (i.e., MSM, TGW) in Malaysia and Nepal. Research Assistants will be involved virtually in multiple aspects of these projects and will work with an interdisciplinary research team that includes community stakeholders, faculty, research staffs, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 11278 | Melissa Bray | Educational Psychology | I need assistance in the Bray Mind Body Health Lab with on-going studies. The primary focus of the lab’s agenda is on evidence-based mind-body health interventions, adding to the extant empirical literature on ten practices that effectively improve psychological, physical, academic, and communication outcomes. These interventions include: 1) relaxation and guided imagery, 2) standardized progressive muscle relaxation, 3) gratitude writing, 4) written emotional expression, 5) culturally sensitive meditation, 6) yoga, 7) video self-modeling, 8) virtual reality, 9) physical activity, 10) mindfulness, and nature.The work can be in person and remote. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 11630 |
Harry van der Hulst | Linguistics | I will be finishing a book on the phenomenon of ‘word stress/word accent (the syllable in a word that is the most prominent, such as the first and last syllable is the English words accident and kangaroo), analyzing word stress systems in a wide variety of language in the world, using a database that I have constructed with information about 800 languages. The assistant will edit chapters, written in Word, perform searches in the data base, search for articles and books and help compiling and correct a bibliography. | Open |
| 10467 | Steven Utke | Accounting | This position involves collecting income tax data of publicly traded firms in order to determine how much tax these firms owe on their foreign earnings. This position is primarily remote, aside from the need for an initial in-person orientation meeting. | Open |
| 11293 | Debarchana Ghosh | Geography | SMART is a pilot randomized clinical trial that examines the impact of mobile health (mHealth) interventions among people with HIV (PWH) who uses cocaine. The purpose of this study is to examine the feasibility (can this be done?) and acceptability (will the patients accept it?) of mHealth intervention tools such as cellular-enabled smart pillboxes and cell phones, on antiretroviral adherence and persistence among PWH who uses cocaine. | Open |
| 10581 | Sandra Chafouleas | Educational Psychology | This position entails working with Dr. Chafouleas and her research team, with specific emphasis on tasks for the UConn Collaboratory on School and Child Health (CSCH: see http://csch.uconn.edu). The mission of the Collaboratory on School and Child Health (CSCH) is to facilitate innovative and impactful connections across research, policy, and practice arenas to advance equity in school and child health. CSCH is committed to anti-racist work that prioritizes inclusion, reduces disparities, and creates systemic change. CSCH researchers acknowledge that a whole child lens that integrates academics and health in serving students leads to improved well-being across domains (academic, social, emotional, behavioral, physical). Although CSCH is engaged in many scholarly activities, the primary job tasks for this position include synthesis of research in different areas related to school and child health, with the intent to disseminate information on evidence-informed policy and practices (e.g. what are best practices for increasing physical activity?, what has the policy impact been on changes to school nutrition programs?) in multi-media formats (e.g., brief user-friendly reports, podcasts). |
Open |
| 11354 | Jeremy Pressman | Political Science | Enter, code, and tally information on protests, strikes, and demonstrations at crowdcounting.org. The Crowd Counting Consortium started in 2017 as an effort to collect data on all political protests in the United States. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 11886 | Nishith Prakash | Economics & Human Rights | Dr. Prakash’s primary research interests include development, political economy, public policy, the economics of education, and behavioral economics. Throughout his academic pursuit, Prof. Prakash has focused on the relationship between government policies and economic development and harnessed rigorous empirical evidence to study the impact of policies and institutions in enabling inclusive growth. He has experience in conducting surveys in developing countries, working with large-scale observational and administrative data sets, and conducting field experiments (RCTs). Prof. Prakash has worked closely with the Department of Education (in Bihar, Nepal, Zanzibar, and Zambia), the State Police (in Bihar, and Telangana), the Ministry of Home Affairs (Government of India), and the World Bank. His teaching interests include Development Economics, Applied Econometrics, and Economics of Gender and Inequality. Research assistants will work across many fields, including development and labor economics, to help conduct research on a variety of projects. An RA will be required to have knowledge of statistical methods for causal inference, writing and communication skills, and a team-player attitude. There are a variety of tasks that are associated with this job, but overall we are looking for someone who is motivated to learn and passionate about research and economics. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses.. |
Open |
| 11883 |
Yi Zhang | Biomedical Engineering | The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has infected more than 17 million individuals worldwide, resulting in the death of more than 3.4 million people as of May 2021. Based on the available data and published reports, most people diagnosed with COVID-19 exhibit no or mild symptoms and could be discharged home for self-isolation. About 20% of them will progress to severe disease requiring hospitalization and medical management. Currently, there is a lack of effective methods and technologies for healthcare providers to remotely monitor patients’ clinical conditions at home, evaluate their disease progression, and predict clinical deterioration for timely medical interventions. This multidisciplinary project aims to create a new route to improve the COVID-19 recovery outcome by providing an at-home smart monitoring system. | Open |
| 11885 |
Young Tang | Animal Science | Our research is focused on finding new veterinary medicines to cure the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) in pigs. This position will help to carry out the assay screen analysis, score the potency of candidate drugs, and organize the laboratory for research compliance. | Open |
| 11884 | Roger Travis | Literatures, Cultures, and Languages | This Student Research Assistant will assist in preparing a book manuscript concerning the contemporary cooperative living card game (including The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and Marvel Champions: The Card Game) and the classical epic tradition. The assistant will read secondary sources as assigned and will locate and read further secondary sources, and prepare an annotated bibliography of sources read. The assistant will learn the games and similar games, and will find other similar games and learn them for comparison, and prepare an annotated “ludography” of such games. The assistant will engage in ongoing conversation with Professor Travis to refine the ideas of the manuscript in light of their research review, and to develop their own research in the area and related areas. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 11899 |
Caiwen Ding | Computer Science and Engineering | Machine Learning & Deep Neural Network Systems; Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing; Computer Architecture and Heterogeneous Computing (CPUs/FPGAs/GPUs); Non-von Neumann Computing and Neuromorphic Computing; Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 11900 | Stephanie Gernant | Pharmacy Practice | I’m a health-service researcher looking for a work-study student who is interested in improving their literature and scientific writing skills. My recent studies explore how individuals of various healthcare disciplines communicate and collaborate over digital platforms. I’m also interested in risk-messaging and medication safety. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 11898 | Ali Bazzi | Electrical and Computer Engineering | This position is on building a lab-scale microgrid to evaluate different renewable energy technologies for interaction with the main utility grid. The project will include setting up two solar arrays, a micro wind turbine, two Li-ion battery packs, a back-up generator, and power electronics that interface these sources with and without the grid. The student will be working in the Longley Building on Depot campus, and will receive support from one graduate student and one visiting undergraduate student in addition to the lab PI, Prof. Ali Bazzi. | Open |
| 11897 | César Abadía | Anthropology & Human Rights | The undergraduate research assistant (RA) will work on a research project focused on the increasing chronic conditions and mental health symptoms in children and adolescents, led by César Abadía-Barrero (Anthropology and Human Rights) and Maria LaRusso (HDFS). In particular, we are looking for a social science major or a pre-health student with interest in children’s mental health and development. The RA will receive training in ethics in research with human subjects and work with qualitative data about the experiences of children and families affected by Pediatric Acute-Onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS), as well as the responses from both schools and health care providers to the children’s health and developmental challenges. The RA will receive training and be responsible for transcription accuracy, coding, and analysis, using different qualitative software. Additional tasks, pending on progress of the research project, include literature review and checking paper sections for accuracy or sources. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 10490 |
Crystal Park | Psychological Sciences | This research assistant (RA) will promote the productivity of our Spirituality, Meaning and Health Lab by working with Dr. Park and a team of graduate and undergraduate students on one or more of a variety of studies currently underway. These include studies of yoga interventions, cancer survivorship, psychology of religion, and resilience to trauma. The RA will participate in a weekly journal club/lab meeting which is anticipated to be in person. Some studies require direct interaction with participants (e.g., recruitment) while others involve gathering and organizing information, integrating results, and helping write manuscripts, much of which can be done remotely. | Open |
| 10479 |
Oh Sung Kwon | Kinesiology | Kwon Laboratory’s research interests include an integrative approach to the study of vascular and skeletal muscle function in both animal and human models. Specifically, our current research is focused on the role of mitochondrial-derived oxidative stress and mitophagy in age-related changes in the immune system (Immunosenescence), ACL injury-induced skeletal and vascular dysfunction, and age-related diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure, and hypertension. In addition, currently, we investigate the pleiotropic effects of statin therapy (cholesterol-lowering drugs) in humans. These projects include investigation of the direct effects of statins on skeletal muscle strength and aerobic performance and the effects of Curcumin supplementation on statin-induced myopathy. | Open |
| 11908 | Kelly Herd | Marketing | As a marketing professor and consumer psychologist, I am interested in uncovering how people’s thoughts, emotions, and experiences influence their behaviors, particularly as they relate to the creative process. Using lab experiments, we examine how people brainstorm, design products, and solve problems. I am also interested in how emotions like embarrassment and social factors – for example, being in a crowded space – changes people’s thoughts and behaviors. | Open |
| 11909 | Angela Starkweather | Nursing | The Starkweather Lab is focused on examining how different people perceive and interpret pain signals and identifying ways to help relieve pain and other distressing symptoms. You will learn how to study the intersections between psychology, neurobiology, genomics, culture, and the environment as well as how to create and test innovations for improving health and quality of life. | Open |
| 10482 | Sherry Pagoto | Allied Health Sciences | Gain well-rounded research experience in our Center for mHealth and Social Media located in the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy. Our research is focused on weight loss, skin cancer prevention, mHealth, and social media. We have many projects going on at all different phases allowing for an opportunity to gain experience in each phase from study startup to recruitment, data collection, reporting, and interpretation. | Open |
| 11379 | Ruth Braunstein | Sociology | The research assistant (RA) will work closely with Dr. Braunstein on her current research project, “The Moral Meanings of Taxpaying,” which explores how the practices of taxpaying and tax resisting are linked to contested understandings of political community, good citizenship and morality in the United States. In particular, the RA will help to collect and analyze documents and other publicly available materials created by activist organizations concerned about the moral implications of paying certain taxes, including the peace movement, the pro-life movement, and others. The RA will also help to review existing published research on related topics, including work in political sociology, economic sociology, and the sociology of religion. The RA will need to be comfortable communicating via Zoom or WebEx, collaborating using Google Drive, keeping large numbers of documents organized, and using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets (spreadsheet app). Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 10517 | Anson Ma | Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering | My team has been researching on 3D printing drug tablets and food for precision medicine and personalized nutrition applications. At UConn, we have also constructed a pilot-scale 3D printer called “HuskyJet”. https://youtu.be/mgq3zEqxfgg. We’re looking for a motivated student or students to help review the literature in these application areas so we can benchmark our work. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 11910 | Anson Ma | Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering | My team has been researching on 3D printing drug tablets and food for precision medicine and personalized nutrition applications. At UConn, we have also constructed a pilot-scale 3D printer called “HuskyJet”. https://youtu.be/mgq3zEqxfgg. We’re looking for a motivated student or students to shadow my graduate students/postdocs and help with sample characterization. | Open |
| 11912 | Anson Ma | Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering | My team has been collaborating with a major global personal care company and their CT-based R&D center to understand the stability of their hair and body lotion products. We’re looking for a motivated student or students to help with sample preparation and characterization. | Open |
| 11913 | Eva Lefkowitz | Human Development and Family Sciences | This Fall we will start a new study of LGBTQ+ college students’ well-being and relationships during the semester compared to on academic breaks, to identify risk and protective factors associated with LGBTQ+ youths’ living environment. The research assistant will help with the following tasks: (1) Recruiting and communicating with participants; (2) Checking quality of data; (3) Organizing data; (4) Coding data; (5) Organizing participant payment; (6) Performing additional miscellaneous tasks as needed. | Open |
| 11920 |
Ryan Coles | Management | My stream of research explores entrepreneurship and innovation in emerging market communities. It intersects with some of society’s biggest challenges: Immigration, refugees, violence, as well as economic and social inequality. My research contexts include: Mexico, Peru, Jordan, China, and the U.S. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 11921 |
Robin Bogner | Pharmaceutical Sciences | During freeze-drying of pharmaceuticals, product in vials must be maintained below a subzero target temperature to resist total collapse of the product. However, potential benefits of micro-collapse or partial consolidation of the pores in the highly porous product have been identified. Pore consolidation is thought to result from viscoelastic flow, which is poorly understood in the partially hydrated pharmaceutical (non-drug) materials produced during freeze-drying. In this project, the student will come to PBB 422 to help 1) set up an older viscoelasticity tester that was recently acquired, 2) design a rig to maintain a subzero temperature and control humidity in the testing area, 3) prepare samples for testing, and 4) determine the viscoelastic characteristics of a series of pharmaceutical materials. | Open |
| 11309 | Molly Waring | Allied Health Sciences | My research focuses on the use of social media for health promotion, particularly healthy eating, physical activity, and weight management among pregnant and post-partum persons and mothers. Current projects include a study of misinformation related to childhood nutrition on social media. Research Assistants will be involved in multiple aspects of ongoing projects and will work with an interdisciplinary research team that includes faculty, research staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students. While some work can be done remotely, RAs are expected to attend weekly team meetings at the Storrs campus. | Open |
| 11925 | Heather Cassano | Digital Media and Design | This research position will support the development and production of the documentary film THE FATE OF HUMAN BEINGS. The film uncovers the stories of people with disabilities and mental illnesses buried in unnamed graves in mental institution cemeteries across the United States. Through archival and present-day material, the film unpacks the ramifications of institution cemeteries, seeking to understand our past and present relationships with the “otherness” of those interred. This is a remote position with optional in-person meetings with faculty. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 11935 | Christian Tryon | Anthropology | This project involves basic inventorying and curation of stone artifacts from archaeological sites in northern Tanzania (dating to as much as 70,000 years ago) prior to their return to the Tanzanian National Museum. The project requires attention to detail, basic data entry skills, and the work may be particularly engaging for those with an interest in archaeology, African history, museum or heritage studies, or human evolution. | Open |
| 11385 | Rachel Tambling | Human Development and Family Sciences | The Work-Study RA will support research activities in the Clinical Outcome and Process Research Laboratory. This laboratory focuses on research about individual, couple, and family therapy, including substance use treatment. The successful candidate will be discrete, detail oriented, and able to work with the faculty on literature reviews. This position is remote work optional, and job duties will vary depending on the status of research projects. Typical projects include literature review, research support, and analysis of newly collected survey data. | Open |
| 11934 | Bradley Wright | Sociology | This position entails research conducted on the topic of how people define and acquire a sense of purpose in life. Assistant will conduct a review of research literature as well as attend in-person research meetings on Mondays 3:30-4:45. Location is Storrs campus. | Open |
| 11942 | Oskar Harmon | Economics | Across the country COVID-19 and the Great Recession 2007 strained university finances and many cut spending on men’s and women’s athletics resulting in several Title IX lawsuits (including one filed by the UConn Women’s Row Team). Title IX requires proportionate spending on men’s and women‘s athletics and the lawsuits argue that these universities likely were already not in compliance and the cuts further increased the imbalance and therefore the noncompliance. This research seeks to empirically model which Title IX lawsuits and threats of Title IX lawsuits are successful and unsuccessful and the explanatory variables the analysis will focus on are financial position, and past spending on men’s/women’s athletic programs. The research assistant for this project will work remotely and assist in a review of the literature of these recent Title IX cases by summarizing the justification for the Title IX lawsuit, the economic data presented by plaintiffs and defendants, and the resolution of the lawsuits. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. | Open |
| 11944 | Oskar Harmon | Economics | States in the US have different policy response to COVID 19 ranging from stay-at-home orders, school closures, mandatory isolation for travelers, and temporary shutdown of non-essential businesses. The policy responses differed in timing, some were earlier than others, in severity, some were more comprehensive than others and will likely have a differential impact on the speed of economic recovery in each state. The methodology of this study is to calculate the speed of recovery in each state then measure the effect of the degree of stringency of COVID measures on the recovery while holding constant each states’ speed of recovery in the three most recent economic recessions (1990, 2001, 2007).The research assistant for this project will work remotely and assist in a review of the literature of current research on measuring the effects of COVID and state policy responses on economic recovery across the 50 States. Fully remote opportunity that is open to undergraduate students at all UConn campuses. |
Open |
| 11945 | Sohyun Park | Plant Science and Landscape Architecture | The student assistants will work on documenting Connecticut landscapes designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. who is the father of American landscape architecture and the designer of Central Park and many other parks and green spaces. The work duties will include collection and reviews of existing written materials and literature about Olmsted’s work, potential site visits, and technical assistance (including note-taking) for Olmsted 200 Conference to be held in April 2022 in Olmsted’s hometown in Hartford, Connecticut. The student research assistants are also expected to help in the preparation of copy for publication, attend research meetings, and perform miscellaneous duties as directed. | Pending |
| 11946 | Sara Silverstein | History and Human Rights Institute | This project examines the history of global public health. It focuses on the history of health services for refugees after the Second World War. It also considers the part of refugees and international cooperation in developing national health services during the interwar and postwar periods. The research assistant position will include organizing and classifying archival records, reading archival files to extract information from sources, and verifying references. The majority of the work can be performed remotely. | Pending |
| 11xxx | Emily Myers | Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences | In our lab we conduct research on how people process the sounds of speech. This includes primarily behavioral data (reaction times, perceptual decisions), primarily with healthy younger adults. This position involves helping with a study of neural processing of speech, helping to code and tag audio files, collecting data from participants (assuming that research resumes in-person in the Fall). The position is intended to be in-person. | Pending |
| 11xxx | Kristen Govoni | Animal Science | Our research focuses on the effects of maternal diet on offspring growth and metabolism. Undergraduate students working in the laboratory will assist graduate students with lab maintenance, serum assays, gene expression, histology, and other molecular biology techniques using samples collected from sheep. Our lab seeks students with a strong work ethic, ability to work well with others, inquisitive mindset, and willingness to learn new things. | Pending |