Nineteen curious undergraduates gathered with five peer mentors in the lobby of the Biorenewables Research Laboratory (BRL) at Iowa State University for the annual “BRL Experience” on April 4. This event gives undergraduate students an opportunity to meet bioenergy researchers and graduate students, and tour the BRL engineering research labs.
Throughout the visit, the undergraduate students met with Iowa NSF EPSCoR researchers, including Zhiyou Wen, associate professor of food sciences and human nutrition, and Laura Jarboe, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, who told them about the requirements and importance of gaining experience in the lab.
At the end of the tour, Bioeconomy Institute director Robert Brown gave a little secret for how undergraduates could get into the BRL labs and programs. “Impress a faculty member,” Brown, Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering, said. “I like students who come to my office hours, have intellectual curiosity, work hard, follow the rules, and prove themselves in the laboratory.”
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