Undergraduate Research Program
The Munroe-Meyer Institute (MMI) Undergraduate Research Program offers a wide range of opportunities for undergraduate students to become a member of one of our many research teams. We are looking for applicants with diverse backgrounds, experiences and interests who want to be part of an inclusive and cooperative research environment. The available volunteer opportunities are listed below.
If you would like to be considered for a position, please email Dr. Jennifer Blackford.
Department: Education and Child Development
- Project Lead: Dr. Kailey Snyder
- Project Description: In Collaboration with local community partners, a video-based education intervention entitled CARE (Considerations for Advocacy, Resources and Empowerment during New Transitions) has been created to improve breastfeeding self-efficacy upon return-to-work after childbirth. These videos will be housed on the Nebraska Extension website. Our first step in this project is to pilot the video education with 25 postpartum parents upon their return to work. Participation will include access to a website with video modules, a breastfeeding goal worksheet and online resource links. Participants will be surveyed via an electronic survey before and after receiving the education materials via an online survey. Participants will also be asked to engage in a follow-up interview 1 month after receiving the education materials. The student would be responsible for contacting participants, sending study materials and completing follow up phone interviews.
- Preferred Skills: Comfortable talking on the telephone, basic survey data analysis, transcription of interviews
- Weekly Commitment: 5 hours
Program: Emotional Neuroscience Research Lab
Program: Blackford Lab- Project Lead: Dr. Jennifer Blackford
- Project Description: The Adaptive Brains – Learning about Emotions (ABLE) is studying anxious children across three sites nationwide. This research includes MRI brain scans, clinical interviews, fear conditioning, and a social stress task.
- Weekly Commitment: 5-10 hours
Department: integrated Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders (iCASD)
Program: ACT/ACTION Clinics- Project Leads: Dr. Elizabeth Preas, Dr. Mary Halbur, Dr. Regina Carroll
- Project Description: Various projects are conducted across the two clinics and descriptions of each can be provided if the student has interest. Our team conducts research and clinical work on improving the efficacy and efficiency of instruction for young children with autism spectrum disorders. Some of our current work includes investigating variables that impact behavior analytic skill acquisition including early communication skills, imitation training and assigning stimuli to sets for training. We also investigate treatment team member (i.e., caregiver, teachers, staff, community member) involvement in behavior analytic service delivery for children with developmental and intellectual disabilities and the treatment integrity of the inventions provided.
- Weekly Commitment: 5-10 hours
Department: integrated Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders (iCASD)
Program: Early Intervention- Project Lead: Dr. Catalina Rey
- Project Description: Our team conducts research and clinical work on improving the efficacy and efficiency of instruction for children with autism spectrum disorders. Some of our current work includes investigating variables that impact behavior analytic skill acquisition including early listener discrimination skills and communication of preferences. Descriptions of each project can be provided if a student has interest.
- Weekly Commitment: 5-10 hours
Department: integrated Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders (iCASD)
Program: Early Intervention- Project Lead: Dr. Nicole Rodriguez
- Project Description: We are teaching several skills to children diagnosed with ASD to assess what skills are necessary for a child to answer different questions about a picture. For example, if the child is shown a blue-star, can they answer "What color?" and "What shape?" with the correct answer, or do they only say the color.
- Preferred Skills: Participants who are organized, have time-management skills, and are familiar with PowerPoint and Excel are preferred.
- Weekly Commitment: 5 hours; We are looking for individuals with availability M-F, between 9-4:30 p.m., to assist with data collection at MMI. Research sessions take about 30 minutes and will be either in the morning or afternoon.
Department: Physical Therapy
Program: Play Lab- Project Lead: Dr. Andrea Baraldi Cunha
- Project Description: Our projects focus on designing intervention and technologies to help improve quality of life for people with disabilities. Our team's current project aims to evaluate intervention measures of a virtual reality program based on Hand Arm Bimanual Intensive Training (HABIT) compared to HABIT program.
- Preferred Skills: We are seeking for undergraduate research assistants to engage in a variety of research activities, including coding of data from videos of intervention sessions, digitally gathering scientific articles and data processing. No prior experience with these tasks is required, as training will be provided.
- Weekly Commitment: 4-8 hours
Department: Physical Therapy
Program: Virtual Reality Lab- Project Lead: Dr. James Gehringer
- Project Description: Our team is developing virtual reality therapy games for children with movement differences. We build therapeutic games that gamify the activities that children might perform during their therapy appointments, to increase engagement and enjoyment.
- Preferred Interests or Skills: Computer programming, physical therapy, occupational therapy, recreational therapy, biomechanics, computer engineering.
- Weekly Commitment: 8 hours
Department: Physical Therapy
Program: Virtual Reality Lab- Project Lead: Dr. James Gehringer
- Project Description: Our team is building virtual reality simulators to enable people with disabilities to practice skills that are difficult to practice in the real world. These software programs simulate activities of daily living, like getting your hair cut or crossing the street, and enable our clinical teams to control the difficulty of the task.
- Preferred Interests or Skills: Computer programming, 3D modelling, 3D motion capture, computer engineering, psychology, behavioral analysis.
- Weekly Commitment: 8 hours
Department: Severe Behavior
- Project Leads: Dr. James Gehringer and Dr. Amanda Zangrillo
- Project Description: Our team is investigating several questions related to machine learning and recognition of challenging behavior in children and adolescents. These machine learning algorithms have the potential to automate the data collection systems that are typically used in the clinical setting.
- Preferred Skills: Research assistants will review videos of assessment and treatment sessions and code the presence of challenging behavior. We prefer individuals with previous experience coding videos.
- Weekly Commitment: 5-20 hours
Department: Severe Behavior
- Project Lead: Dr. Tara Fahmie
- Project Description: Our team is identifying the most efficient, safe and trauma-informed ways to assess and treat severe behaviors like aggression, self-injury, and property destruction. Participants in our research are individuals ages 3-19 with intellectual and developmental disabilities who display severe behaviors in home, school and/or the community.
- Preferred Skills: Strong communication skills, ability to observe severe behavior live or via video with a neutral reaction, maintain patient confidentiality, openness to learning data collection and graphing techniques, interest in learning about the assessment and treatment process (hands-on clinical-research training available if interested).
- Weekly Commitment: 5-10 hours