Project Summary / General Information:

Understanding the dynamics of molecules at material interfaces is critical for designing next-generation catalysts and clean, green energy technologies. Simulating these processes, such as how toxic carbon monoxide oxidizes into carbon dioxide or how electrons move through materials, requires detailed quantum mechanical calculations that are computationally demanding with traditional techniques.

Our research group bridges quantum chemistry and artificial intelligence by developing and applying foundational machine learning models to dynamical chemical simulations. By training models on quantum data to capture molecular motions at surfaces and interfaces, we accelerate materials modeling to discover new catalytic mechanisms and design principles for future materials. Students in this project will gain hands-on experience in computational chemistry, scientific Python programming, and modern machine learning frameworks applied to chemical physics.

College & Department:

College of Arts & Sciences...031900 - Chemistry

Description of Responsibilities and Position Duties:

- Set up and execute quantum mechanical electronic structure calculations and machine learning molecular dynamics simulations.
- Curate, preprocess, and visualize molecular datasets and trajectory data.
- Assist in training, benchmarking, and evaluating machine learning force fields and surface reaction models using Python.
- Analyze simulation results (reaction pathways, surface binding energies, activation barriers).
- Participate in weekly lab meetings and present research progress.

Desired Qualifications and Skills:

- Major in Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science, Chemical Engineering, Mathematics, or related fields.
- Basic familiarity with Python is advantageous but not expected.
- An interest in computational modeling, artificial intelligence, or quantum chemistry.

Prior experience with machine learning or high-level quantum mechanics is not required, we will teach you the computational tools and theory you need.

How to Apply:

Interested students should email their CV/resume and unofficial transcript or list of relevant coursework to Henry (htran@chemistry.msstate.edu).

Project Summary / General Information:

This research lab involves all things related to parenting emerging adults, including parental psychopathology, parent-child relationships, discipline, maltreatment, and many other relevant factors. We focus on how aspects of parenting during emerging adulthood are associated with various psychological outcomes.

College & Department:

College of Arts & Sciences...038600 - Psychology

Description of Responsibilities and Position Duties:

Students typically participate through joining a directed individual study course (typically 3 credits) and attend weekly lab meetings to complete work. Participating students most often develop a research idea, learn how to complete moderation and mediation analyses, and submit their findings to conferences for presentation. Students gain valuable experience in a research lab, products to put on their resume, and access to a strong letter of recommendation if they perform well in the lab.

Desired Qualifications and Skills:

Course work in statistics, research design, and psychology are desired but not required.

How to Apply:

Students should contact Dr. Cliff McKinney at cm998@msstate.edu to express their interest. Send a brief statement expressing what interests you about the lab and your career goals along with your resume that shows your current overall GPA.

Project Summary / General Information:

The Community Health Outreach, Relationships, and Action Lab (CHORAL), led by Dr. Aggie Rieger, is working with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center to better understand the experiences and needs of rural rape crisis centers. Rape crisis centers are local nonprofits that aim to respond to and prevent sexual violence (including sexual harassment and assault, inside and outside of relationships and across the lifespan).

Our project will include an advisory board of rural prevention and victim service leaders in rural areas throughout the United States, surveys with rural volunteers and employees, and interviews or focus groups with rural providers.

This project is a great fit for students interested in violence prevention, community services, rural health, and/or community-engaged research. Students will gain knowledge and skills in both clinical and community psychology research. Opportunities for disseminating findings via both scholarly (e.g., conferences, posters, presentations) and action-oriented (e.g., via toolkits, practice partner presentations, newsletters) channels will likely be available for students who are able to work on this project for one or more years.

Please note that all students, without need for application, are also welcome to join the casual, supportive CHORAL Community Psychology Journal Club. This journal club will meet the first Wednesday of every month from 3:30-4:30pm in Rice Hall 343 (beginning September 2). Email Dr. Rieger in advance at ar3029@msstate.edu to get on the email list and receive each month's selected reading. In the journal club, students will learn about current community and clinical-community psychology research from top publishers.

College & Department:

College of Arts & Sciences...038600 - Psychology

Description of Responsibilities and Position Duties:

Literature reviews, resource compiling, IRB support, creating fliers and recruitment materials, survey piloting and editing, uploading survey materials into Qualtrics, interview guide piloting and editing, transcript cleaning.

Depending on student interest and availability, it may also be possible for students to support mixed-methods data analysis.

Desired Qualifications and Skills:

Organization, attention to detail, and willingness to learn are required.

Interests in sexual violence prevention and response, rural health, and community engagement are strongly desired - being interested in these topics will make this project more exciting for you!

All students are welcome to apply.

How to Apply:

Send a brief email with your interest in the project, availability for regular weekly meetings, and amount of time available each week you can devote to this project. Also include: your year at MSU (e.g., first year, second year), declared or intended major, and (most importantly!) what you hope to learn/skills you hope to acquire by joining CHORAL.

Please note: Dr. Rieger, like all professors, is a mandated reporter. If you share information about MSU student experiences (including your own) with sexual violence and related harms in your application, know that Dr. Rieger may need to report this information. This note is added as a recommendation from a sexual violence researchers' working group, as across universities we noticed that it is common for students to share this information in lab applications without knowing local university mandated reporting guidelines.

Project Summary / General Information:

Hair coat shedding is the seasonal process by which beef cattle lose their winter hair. In the southeast region of the United States, cows that fail to shed in a timely manner show more pronounced signs of heat stress during summer compared to their slick-coated counterparts, as animals with dark, thick, woolly coats are disadvantaged in terms of heat dissipation (Gray et al.,
2011).
For this project, we will evaluate differences in thermosensation and
heat tolerance between early and late shedders, and use
blood samples collected from this trial and previous years to perform targeted gene sequencing to confirm protein-coding variants.

College & Department:

College of Ag & Life Sciences...011300 - Animal & Dairy Science

Description of Responsibilities and Position Duties:

The specific tasks include:

1. Assisting with laboratory procedures such as DNA extraction from blood samples and sequencing library preparation.
2. Data organization.
3. Performing additional duties as needed.

Desired Qualifications and Skills:

1. Sophomore standing or above
2. Responsible, dependable, and highly organized
3. Demonstrated interest in biological research
4. Previous laboratory pipetting experience is preferred

How to Apply:

Interested candidates should send their CV to Dr. Peixin Fan (pf324@msstate.edu)