There are opportunities for undergraduate research experiences in both computational cell biology and computational neuroscience in the Smith lab. Undergraduate research positions are generally for 3 credits during the semester and a full time job or fellowship during the summer. Because summer positions are usually a continuation of a working relationship developed over the previous academic year, it's never to early to start looking for an undergraduate research project! If you want to talk it over, email me at: greg@as.wm.edu

To be successful in undergraduate research in my group, you don't have to be math genius (at least not when you start!). On the contrary, I have found that students with a strong interest or background in cell biology, neuroscience, and/or bioengineering can pick up the specialized mathematics that is needed to do biological modeling. What is most important is that you are interested in learning to think quantitatively about the physiology of cells.

It is important to have good analytical skills and to enjoy using computers. Because the cellular models we develop are actually systems of nonlinear differential equations, it usually not possible to solve them by hand. However, we can always "numerically integrate" the differential equations of our biological model using software that we either purchase or write (in C, C++, or MATLAB). While undergraduate research in biology often means doing laboratory "bench work," students in my group spend most of their time reading relevant scientific literature, developing mathematical models, writing and running computer simulations, and comparing simulation results to experiments performed by my collaborators.

XPP (short for ``X Phase Plane'') is a software package often used by members of the Smith lab. Your first job as an undergraduate research student in my group will likely be to "teach yourself" XPP running on the LINUX workstations in my computational biology lab (I'll be glad to answer questions!). There is a nice XPP Tutorial that you can work through at your own pace.

In weekly lab meetings, you will learn biological modeling techniques, give oral presentations of your work (or journal articles of interest to you). When the time is right we plan an undergraduate research project that matches your interests.

All projects culminate in a poster presentation at William and Mary or a scientific conference (e.g., the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience or the Biophysical Society). Undergraduate research students who find this research interesting will be encouraged to publish a peer-reviewed scientific paper in computational cell biology or neuroscience by the time they graduate.

 Greg Smith's Home Page     Applied Science Departmental Web Page