Auburn Engineering faculty receive NSF grant for undergraduate summer research program
Published: Oct 23, 2025 3:00 PM
By Rachel Wingard
Summer on the Plains usually brings an emptier campus, with most students either returning home or doing internships elsewhere. However, starting in the summer of 2026, Auburn Engineering will host students from across the country for a 10-week Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Russell Mailen, associate professor of aerospace engineering, said the REU will bring in 10 students from other universities who will live on campus and conduct research under the mentorship of various faculty affiliated with the Center for Polymers and Advanced Composites within the College of Engineering.
Mailen, the PI on the project, said the research, though interdisciplinary, will have a specific focus.
“The research will be across all different types of engineering, but it's unified by this common theme of transport phenomenon,” he said. “Transport phenomena can be described as the flux, or rate at which something is happening, being equal to the driving force divided by the resistance.
“If you're in electrical engineering, then you’ll look at how electrons move through wires. If you’re in fluids research, then it's how does a fluid move through a channel. If you are an aspiring researcher, you’ll look at how undergraduate experiences help you overcome obstacles to achieve more with your degree.”
Kyle Schulze, an assistant professor in mechanical engineering and co-PI, said the theme goes beyond just the research.
“At the end of the day, what we're trying to do is transport knowledge from us to the students,” he said.
Schulze said the one of the goals of the program is to help students see commonalities across different fields and learn how to work with people in other disciplines.
“The world is a big place,” he said. “You’re not going to just work with people you graduate with. You’ll end up working with a whole range of people from different walks of life.”
The abstract for the grant describes how the program participants will learn how to apply the research focus to real-life problems, “combining theory and practice to promote curiosity and inspire lifelong learning.”
Mailen said the grant doesn’t just give invaluable experience to the students who participate. It also benefits the faculty who are mentors.
“We recently had a meeting about our focus on undergraduate research and how we can engage students better across the entire college,” he said. “One thing about this grant is that it doesn’t just focus on the students’ experience — it also focuses on teaching the mentoring faculty how to motivate the students to do their best work.”
Both Mailen and Schulze said the program fits well with what the College of Engineering is already doing with undergraduate research.
“We’re getting national recognition for what we can do,” Schulze said. “I’m eternally impressed with all of the research that is currently coming out of this college. It is absolutely amazing work. I want people to think about us when they think about that high-caliber kind of research and education.”
The structure for the program will include extracurricular activities outside of research, such as field trips to companies closely associated with the college that work on various transport problems, and recreational team-building activities.
Mailen also said the students gain more than just technical knowledge from the program.
“It goes beyond what you learn in the lab,” he said. “It's what you learn about life to go along with it. You learn how to navigate academia and interpersonal relationships; it's a lot more than being able to pour fluids into a beaker. There’s a very human-centered aspect to the work.”
Media Contact: , dzd0065@auburn.edu, 334
Russell Mailen, associate professor of aerospace engineering, and Kyle Schulze, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, received a National Science Foundation grant to establish a 10-week Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program focused on transport phenomena.
