Finding a Mentor for Undergraduate Research

Mentorship in Physics

Professor Aubin and his mentee William Charles (Class of 2018)

We offer the following suggestions for finding a mentor at FCRH.

  • Visit the associate chair of the department in which you are interested in doing research—they can often make great faculty referrals.
  • Talk to one of your professors after class about either their or their colleagues’ research. Students strongly encourage this!
  • Review department webpages; many of these describe faculty research interests. Our faculty loves talking about their research, so they will welcome you inquiring!
  • Note that only tenured or tenure-track faculty members can mentor undergraduate students during the academic year, so keep that in mind as you discuss projects with faculty. Non-tenure line faculty may mentor over the summer.
  • Below are some faculty who have advertised positions they have, or that they are interested in being contacted. Reach out to them!

Over 100 faculty members mentored students in undergraduate research last year alone.

    • Sylvia C Finneman
      • Email: [email protected]       
      • Brief project description: "Photoreceptor outer renewal: molecular mechanisms and link to retinal disease"
        Routine diurnal photoreceptor outer segment renewal is a fundamental homeostatic process in the vertebrate retina. The research in the Finnemann laboratory focuses on molecules and pathways that mediate signaling between photoreceptors and neighboring retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells. The resulting cellular cross-talk ensures timely exposure of the “eat me” signal phosphatidylserine at spent photoreceptor outer segment tips followed by their uptake and degradation by the RPE. Additional current work explores RPE intrinsic anti-inflammatory signaling downstream of RPE phagocytic receptors, which is essential to protect the neural retina from distress and, eventually, degeneration."
      • Time commitment: flexible, but 8 hours per week minimum
      • Deadline: recruitment each spring depending on # of graduating seniors
      • Other relevant information: Should have genetics lab or equivalent molecular lab experience; cell biology course preferred but not required
    • JD Lewis
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Other relevant information: No specific project, continually accepting applicants.
    • John Wehr
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Will take 1 student in summer 2025; 1 or 2 during the semster.
      • Brief project description: We study freshwater ecosystems, focusing on primary producers: algae, bryophytes, and aquatic vascular plants: their diversity, nutritional ecology, their roles in food webs.
      • Time commitment: In semester: minimum 8 hours
      • Deadline: 2/28/25
    • Christopher Koenigsmann
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Project description: Nanomaterials are a class of materials with sizes that range from 1 - 100 nm (for context 1 nm is the thickness of a double helix DNA strand). Our group develops new nanomaterials that can be used in renewable energy devices such as fuel cells and solar cells, sensors for biologically relevant small molecules like glucose, and for air purification.
      • Time commitment:
      • Other relevant information: Interested students should be currently taking or have completed General Chemistry.
    • Julia Schneider
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Will take 4 students/yr
      • Project description: Synthesis and characterization of organic semiconductors. You'll learn advanced organic synthesis techniques, and there will be opportunities to do spectroscopy experiments and electrochemistry.
      • Time commitment: 6 hrs/week
      • Other relevant information: Preference to those who enjoy Orgo Lab.
    • Joshua Schrier
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Project description: Research in applications of computational methods to problems in chemistry.  Some active projects include:  (i) Data-driven approaches to critical mineral separations; (ii) Machine-learning assisted experimentation for origins of life research; (iii) Hardware/software development for colorimetric and electrochemical sensors; (iv) Large language models for chemistry and materials science
      • Time commitment: 3+hrs/week
      • Other relevant information: Interest in computer programming.
    • Elizabeth Thrall
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Project description: My lab investigates the molecular mechanisms of DNA replication using single-molecule fluorescence microscopy in live bacterial cells
      • Time commitment: 8 hrs/week
      • Other relevant information:
    • Matthew Hockenberry
      • Email: [email protected]
        2-3 positions available
      • Project description: Manifest (https://manifest.supplystudies.com) is an narrative toolkit for visualizing, analyzing, and documenting supply chains, production lines, and trade networks. While of significant social and environmental importance, global supply chains are both complex and opaque. Communicating the impacts of these networks—in journalism, scholarship, and advocacy—is challenging. In response, Manifest recontextualizes approaches from supply chain management systems to provide a platform that produces and disseminates the critical accounts of global logistical operation necessary for understanding the impact of these structures, particularly with regard to media technologies and communication systems.
      • Time commitment: 4-8 hrs/ week
      • Other relevant information: Either students with strong research and writing skills or students interested in programming web applications.
    • Jennifer Moorman
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Other relevant information: General interest in mentoring students.
    • Tim Wood
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Other relevant information:  General interest in mentoring students.
    • Zakirul Alam Bhuiyan
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Project description:
        • AI-Enhanced Data Encryption for IoT: Developing advanced encryption techniques using AI to secure data in IoT devices.
        • Network endpoint security and trustworthiness: Assessing the effectiveness of endpoint protection solutions in cloud environments.
        • Blockchain-based data authentication in Wi-Fi IoT environments: This involves using blockchain technology to enhance the security and trustworthiness of data exchanges between IoT devices over Wi-Fi networks. 
        • Homomorphic Encryption for IoT Data: Using homomorphic encryption techniques, enhanced by AI, to perform computations on encrypted IoT data without compromising security.
        • AI-Based Access Control for IoT: Implementing AI-driven access control mechanisms to ensure only authorized users can access IoT data.
        • Developing Trust Models for self-driven vehicular systems. 
        • Developing Data Trustworthiness Methods in AI and IoT Networks
        • Wi-Fi-based physical authentication in IoT
        • Keeping Your Private Data Private in AI-based IoT 
        • Providing Protection to the Protector in IoT
      • Time commitment: The time equivalent to one course load.
      • Other relevant information: Must have a passion and interest in working towards publishing the work.
    • Damian Lyons
      • Email: [email protected]
      • 1 position available
      • Project description: Wide area robot navigation uses the identification of visual landmarks seen in common between pairs of robots in a team of robots distributed over a wide outdoor area to plan a visually guided path for a robot to an initially unseen target as a sequence of common landmarks.
      • Time commitment: >5hrs/week
      • Other relevant information: CS1/CS2 and/or Python, ideally exposure to robotics, eg ROS, OpenCV
    • Ying Mao
      • Email: [email protected]
      • 1-2 positions available
      • Other relevant information: Generally interested in mentoring.
    • Andrew Albin
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Affiliated programs: Medieval Studies
      • Project description:
      • Other relevant information: I'm very glad to work with undergrad students with an interest in premodern performance of any kind: drama, music, bookmaking, contemplation, liturgy, and monastic practice are particular specialities. I'm also very happy to work on medieval English literary and cultural history projects. More broadly, I can support projects that explore sound, music, and hearing (not just medieval)!
    • Jordan Stein    
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Affiliated programs: Comparative Literature/African and African American Studies
      • Project description: Research into book history and the history of printing, especially as it connects to African and African American studies and gender/sexuality studies
    • Steven Stoll    
    • Carl Fischer    
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Project description: Latin American literature, cinema, and art. Gender/sexuality studies. Queer studies. Fascism and authoritarianism. Aesthetics. Translation.
    • Francesca Parmeggiani    
    • Lise Schrier
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Lise Schreier is Professor of French and Comparative Literature. Her studies of gender, race, colonialism, material culture, and cultural violence have drawn on feminist newspapers, fashion plates and garments, medical travelogues, children's literature, vaudeville theater, and early comics. At Fordham, she teaches courses on France and the francophone world, including “Women on the Margins of Nineteenth-Century France,” “Writers and Lawbreakers,” “Francophone Middle East,” and “The Francophone Graphic Novel.”
    • Susanne Hafner
    • Eric Bianchi   
      • Email: [email protected]
      • If your research interests focus on or interect with music, I'm happy to serve as mentor -- or to help you clarify the direction of your project and identify the mentor who best fits it.  I've worked with students on a range of projects, including:  music and race in colonial Mexico; music and philosophy in 17th-century Germany; female composers of early modern Italy; music and mathematics; contemporary avant-garde vocal technique.  Bring your interests and let's chat!
    • Stafford Davis
    • Bligh Somma
    • Alex Riedel
      • Email: [email protected]
      • My area of research focuses on what sort of "things" about literature (or what it is about the experiences of reading literature) that reflects an "otherness" that is both inscribed within "said" words but which also rupture or break open apart or outside of such words; and, additionally, how such "otherness" might create, reflect, make possible, or even effect a certain politics.
      • I teach 1 section of Human Nature and am still in coursework myself, but am willing to help an undergraduates as much as I can.
    • Megan Walsh
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Project description: Working broadly on the philosophy of resistance in a feminist/queer context (PhD student)
    • Selin Gulgoz
    • Lindsay Till Hoyt
      • Email: [email protected]
      • Check out the 3D Lab website to learn more!
      • We typically recruit a new cohort of students at the end of the spring semester to begin training the following fall! If you are interested in community-engaged research, students can also get hands-on experience via Dr. Hoyt's advanced course PSYC 4855: Participatory Action Research.
    • Alfonso J. Martinez    
    • Matthew Block
    • Allan Gilbert    
      • Email: [email protected]
      • 1-2 positions available
      • Project description: Work on the study of various artifacts in Fordham's extensive collection of historic NYC objects
      • Other relevant information: Volunteers usually drawn from archaeology/anthropology courses, but can be anyone with an interest. Research leads to a paper describing the object and its historical background; can obtain tutorial credit if desired.
    • Reiko Matsuda Goodwin
      • Email: [email protected]
      • 2 positions available
      • Project description: Comoé National Park Primate Conservation Project
      • Time commitment: 10–15 hrs/wk
      • Other relevant information: The work is to examine Camera Trapped images for specific purposes. You should be proficient in MS Excel. 
    • Fadi Skeiker    
      • Email: [email protected]
      • 3 positions available
      • Time commitment: 10 hours a week
      • Project description: I am involved in multiple projects on migration, applied theatre and drama therapy
      • Other relevant information: Very organized, with strong research and communication skills, ability to stick to deadlines. Google key words "Fadi Skeiker"