Undergraduate Research Opportunities

The overarching goal of my lab is to understand how developmental events coordinate organism-level behaviors, and how these interactions can inform both biomedical and ecological contexts.

Dr. David's academic work focuses on understanding and maximizing the value of innovative R&D in the biopharmaceutical industry.

A fundamental problem for biology is to understand biological diversity. Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) famously wrote that whereas the functional biologist might be interested in how variation arises mechanistically, the evolutionary biologist is preoccupied by why diversity occurs in the first place.

The Freudenreich lab uses the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker's yeast) as a model organism to study genome instability.

Our scientific curiosity revolves around understanding how viruses can rewire cells to change what genes are expressed and how this altered gene expression changes cellular behavior and interactions with the extracellular matrix (ECM).

The Hengel lab is interested in understanding how environmental toxicants human beings experience in our environment change our DNA.

Our lab investigates the enzymes, nucleic acid-binding proteins, and nucleic acids that orchestrate mitochondrial nucleic acid metabolism.

The human vagina is home to a community of bacteria, viruses, and fungi, whose makeup impacts the sexual and reproductive health of the host.

The primary goal of the Kao laboratory is to understand the neural mechanisms by which experience shapes behavior.

We work at the intersection of developmental biology, artificial life, bioengineering, synthetic morphology, and cognitive science.

Our lab uses the amphibian model system, Xenopus laevis (African clawed frog) as a model organism to elucidate how complex structures such as tissues and organs are formed during development, and repaired after injury.

Our lab's research is focused on the ways that cells respond to and tolerate DNA damage. We are particularly interested in cellular responses to DNA breaks and base damage, and how these responses relate to cancer and aging.

Our lab studies DNA structure and functioning with an emphasis on genome instability caused by structure-prone DNA repeats in yeast and cultured human cells.

Plant growth and chemistry are often constrained by growing conditions and our research group explores how woody and herbaceous plants balance allocation to the different demands and their impacts on herbivore preference and performance.

Our lab studies the biology of aging and age-related disease using systems biology, quantitative genetics, metabolomics, and evolutionary approaches.

The Reed lab is interested in extinction risk and the effects of human alteration of landscapes on the distribution, abundance, and persistence of species.

Our research explores mechanisms underlying stress in wild vertebrates with a focus on captive birds. Undergraduate projects focus on how birds react physiologically and behaviorally to stressful stimuli (restraint, handling, predator vocalizations, etc.).

Research in the Rotjan lab focuses on marine ecology and global change. The main goal is to examine how marine species, communities, and ecosystems respond to the complex multitude of stressors emerging in the contemporary world ocean, and how they will respond to the future ocean change that we expect in the coming decades.

Our lab is currently studying how temperature stress affects honey bee colony health and behavior.

The Tran lab focuses on elucidating how epigenetic dysregulation contributes to cellular senescence and biological aging. Epigenetics is the study of how cells control gene expression without altering the underlying DNA sequence.

In the Tufts Neuromechanics and Biomimetic Devices Laboratory (BDL) we study how the tobacco hornworm caterpillar controls its complex movements and then we apply these findings to develop new approaches to robot control and design.

Our lab studies the biomechanics, fluid dynamics, and neurophysiology of locomotion.

Species are experiencing rapidly changing environments around the globe, in part due to human activity. Our lab studies the evolution and ecology of species in changing environments.

Research in the Wolfe lab seeks to identify the ecological and evolutionary processes that control the assembly and function of microbiomes.