Office of Undergraduate Research

Virginia Tech offers a wide variety of resources to help prospective undergraduate researchers get their hands dirty. The Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) is the most prominent of these and offers several opportunities for undergraduates. They have office hours every Thursday for students who want advice for deciding which research opportunities would best fit their needs. Additionally, they are partnered with several research institutes within Virginia Tech.

Some notable examples include: the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, which offers medical and biological research positions available to anyone from high school to graduate school; the Institute for Society, Culture, and Environment (ISCE), which seeks to address humanitarian and social issues; and the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Sciences, which is renowned for its transdisciplinary research opportunities.

If you are interested in a change of scenery, one option you might want to consider is pursuing a research opportunity in another country. OUR is not only partners with institutes within Virginia Tech, but also research organizations abroad as well. Virginia Tech and the University of Nottingham, UK collaborate to provide engineering students with research experiences on sustainable systems such as ecologically friendly transportation or more efficient electric grids. There is also a team that travels to study some of the many diverse bat species in China every year through a partnership with Shandong University. These are just a few examples of research opportunities abroad, as there are also others that are only available to certain majors or students in certain colleges. If you are interested in learning more about researching overseas, you can find additional information for specific programs on your university’s website.