Project Title: Developing methods to assess corals resilience to ocean deoxygenation
Department: Environmental Engineering Sciences
Faculty Mentor: Andrew Altieri, andrew.altieri@essie.ufl.edu
Ph.D. Student Mentor(s): N/A
Terms Available: Fall, Spring, Summer
Student Level: Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors; 1 student for the summer 2019/fall 2019/spring 2020 period
Prerequisites: None, but experience with coral and aquarium systems a plus.
Credit: 0-3 credits via EGN 4912
Stipend: None unless selected for University Scholars
Application Requirements: Basic online application, Resume, Faculty interview, email one pdf file with all application requirements to andrew.altieri@essie.ufl.edu.
Application Deadline: None
Website: www.altierilab.org
Project Description: Ocean deoxygenation is a poorly understood but growing threat to coral reefs worldwide. The student will examine multiple stress responses in corals to determine how their onset is related to duration of exposure and whether they are reliable indicators of time until death.
Project Title : Engineering Education Collaborative
Department: Environmental Engineering Sciences
Faculty Mentor: Elliot Douglas, edouglas@ufl.edu
Ph.D. Student Mentor(s): N/A
Terms Available: Fall, Spring, Summer
Student Level: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior; students per term varies depending on current projects
Prerequisites: None
Credit: 0-3 credits via EGN 4912
Stipend: varies depending on current projects or via University Scholars
Application Requirements: Resume, Faculty Interview; email one pdf file with all application requirements to Professor Elliot Douglas, edouglas@ufl.edu
Application Deadline: None
Website: https://faculty.eng.ufl.edu/elliot-douglas/
Project Description: The Engineering Education Collaborative conducts research in various aspects of engineering education, including engineering problem solving and engineering ethics. Research is conducted using qualitative methods such as analysis of interviews and documents as well as quantitative surveys. Availability of undergraduate research positions depends on the state of current projects in any given semester. Contact Professor Elliot Douglas, edouglas@ufl.edu, to find out what specific projects are currently available.
Project Title: Development of a Laser-Based Water Level Sensor for Fine-Scale Ecohydrological Measurements
Department: Environmental Engineering Sciences
Faculty Mentor: David Kaplan, dkaplan@ufl.edu
Ph.D. Student Mentor(s): Kevin Henson, kevinh1212@ufl.edu
Terms Available: Summer
Student Level: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, 1 student per semester
Prerequisites: none
Credit: 0-3 credits via EGN 4912
Stipend: none unless selected for University Scholars
Application Requirements: Resume, faculty interview; email one pdf file with all application requirements to Dr. Kaplan, dkaplan@ufl.edu
Application Deadline: March 1 for Summer and Fall terms; November 1 for Spring Term
Website: www.watershedecology.org
Project Description: Evapotranspiration (ET) is a critical component of the global water cycle. It is the process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from soil and other surfaces (evaporation) and from the stomatal surfaces of plants (transpiration). It is a critical process, but one that is difficult to pinpoint due to a lack of accurate and affordable sensor technology. One low-cost approach to measuring site-specific ET is to take advantage of the diurnal fluctuations in surface water and groundwater driven by ET in areas where the water table is close to the surface. This method requires highly sensitive equipment that is able to accurately quantify water table variation. The goal of this work is to develop and test a laser-based water level sensor (LB-WLS) to improve the estimate of ET via diurnal variation in water level.
Project Title: Soil Data Rescue and Harmonization
Department:
Faculty Mentor: Kathe Todd-Brown, ktoddbrown@ufl.edu
Ph.D. Student Mentor(s): N/A
Terms Available: Spring
Student Level: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior; 5 new students in Spring with opportunity for work over future semesters
Prerequisites: Students should have an interest in data and environmental sciences. Students should expect to develop coding skills in R.
Credit: 0-3 credits via EGN 4912
Stipend: None first semester
Application Requirements: Resume and faculty interview. Send Kathe Todd-Brown ktoddbrown@ufl.edu an email with your resume and request an interview.
Application Deadline: Monday, November 17, 2025
Website: https://github.com/ktoddbrown/SoilDRaH
Project Description: Soils currently play a key role as a natural sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide, but this sink could switch to a source under a warmer and wetter climate. To better understand this source/sink we need more data that we can draw on to train models so we can predict how soils will respond in a changing world. Students on this project will work on a team to develop informatics tools to link soils data from different sources. This may include: note taking during international meetings of soils and informatics experts, transcription of data from primary literature, describing different data structures and layouts, writing harmonization scripts based on these data descriptions, and presenting results from our research.