Historically, UC Irvine students from a number of different academic backgrounds have become undergraduate researchers in the Department of Epidemiology. Examples of past student undergraduate majors have included statistics, biological sciences, public health sciences, computer sciences, informatics, earth systems science, chemistry, mathematics, physics, engineering and others. Our students have overwhelmingly reported that their research experience in the Department of Epidemiology has proven helpful in refining their intellectual and scholarly interests, and in improving their critical reasoning skills.
Since academic coursework must be your highest priority as a student at UC Irvine, the department’s faculty recommends that students maintain a minimum cumulative UC GPA of 3.1 in order to participate in our "199" research program. The department's faculty is especially interested in UC Irvine undergraduate students who are planning, upon their graduation, to pursue an advanced degree (e.g., MS, MPH, PhD, MD) in epidemiology or a related discipline such as medicine, public health, biostatistics, biomedical science/engineering, earth science or environmental science.
How do students interested in acquiring a research experience get started? For the Department of Epidemiology, you should first try to match your particular academic interest with that of one or more faculty members in the department. This can be accomplished by reviewing individual faculty research interests. When you find faculty who have a shared intellectual and research interest, you should e-mail that faculty member directly by using the contact information provided in their respective faculty profile. In that e-mail please state your major, what year of study you are in, what elements of their research you have an interest in and your reasons for wanting an undergraduate research experience. You should also state if you are looking for a research experience for academic credit, work-study or as a volunteer research assistant. Other than an existing Work-Study grant held by the interested student, other paid positions are rare.
Research experiences for undergraduates can be arranged independently, as detailed above, or through several organized campus programs. Individually, you can make arrangements directly with an epidemiology faculty member to receive academic credit via the campus’ 199 course program. In addition, the Department of Epidemiology actively participates in several organized on-campus programs geared towards helping students enhance their overall research experience as follows:
