Undergraduate Education

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are a way of bringing the excitement of research into the classroom and reaching more students, earlier in their studies, than would happen with the typical summer research experience or senior thesis project. While CUREs are increasingly popular in other scientific fields, they are still rare in physics. I will show a paradigm for computational CUREs based on studies of combinatorially created sets of similar items, such as structures of materials. Students follow a defined protocol to contribute to a novel class dataset which they analyze, and also calculate an additional property of their choice in consultation with the instructor. I have used this paradigm in a condensed-matter physics class, as a final project calculating vibrations of a monolayer alloy MoS_2xSe_2(1-x); and in a sophomore-level modern physics class, as a lab exercise calculating wavefunctions of heterostructures of 2D materials and comparing them to the particle in a box. Students use a GUI tool (https://nanohub.org/tools/ucb_compnano) which requires minimal computational skills. Studies show that CUREs improve learning, foster a sense of belonging in the field, increase retention of students in science, and are especially beneficial for minoritized/underrepresented students. DOI: 10.1557/s43580-024-00934-w