“If it wasn’t for the SURF program, I probably would not be at Harvard right now.”

To measure the success of Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program, we can look at any number of concrete data points, from the highly competitive applicant pool and number of students mentored to the tally of research projects and the ways in which they move science forward.

But where in the spreadsheet do you factor in experience gained? What formula calculates how a life changes? How many doors open? Which new paths unfold?

For all that the SURF program accomplishes in the name of science, the 10-week intensive summer research fellowship also boasts a profound and lasting impact on the individuals involved. SURF, it turns out, can be as life altering as the research it produces.

The SURF advantage

A 22-year-old from Salem, Conn., Kelsey Lucas graduated in December 2012 from Roger Williams University with a bachelor’s of science degree in biology and a minor in mathematics.

Today, she is enrolled in graduate school at Harvard University — an opportunity, Lucas said, made possible by the Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR summer research program:

“If it wasn’t for the SURF program, I probably would not be at Harvard right now. The SURF program was extremely valuable — it let me do more extensive research than I would have been able to do during the school year, juggling classes.”

On one level, Lucas said, SURF exposed her to different aspects of research, which helped her figure out where she wanted to head. She gained insight and skills from fieldwork, setting up equipment, and producing a poster presentation.

As she narrowed down her focus and set her sights on graduate school, Lucas said SURF proved to be invaluable.

“The SURF program made my application so much stronger than it would have been otherwise,” she said. “One of the comments I got a lot during my interviews was they were impressed by how much research experience I had.”

Upon her December 2012 graduation from RWU, Lucas secured a spring internship at the California Institute of Technology before being accepted into graduate school, where she had her pick from a prestigious list — Harvard, Brown, Tufts, University of North Carolina, and Georgia Institute of Technology.

One thing leads to another

Both of her parents work in science-related fields, so Lucas had a lot of exposure to the discipline and knew in high school and going into college that she was interested in both science and math. But the specifics eluded her until she began working with Dr. Sean Colin, associate professor of environmental science at RWU.

Lucas said she started on a marine biology and aquaculture track, but her research experiences eventually led her to the physics of biology and Dr. Colin, who was studying the physics of jellyfish swimming. His field of expertise lies in biomechanics and evolutionary ecology.

The summer between sophomore and junior years, Lucas started working on an animal propulsion study with Nathan Johnson, then a biology undergraduate at Providence College and now a graduate student at Texas A&M-Galveston, helping collect data under the guidance of Dr. Colin and Dr. Jack Costello at PC.

The researchers were looking at nature’s design of the animal propulsive structure, specifically, both swimmers and fliers, and how they moved in water or air.

Frontiers of exploration

Tedious at times, the data collection involved scouring the Internet for videos of animals moving through the air and sea, following strict criteria to fit the study and then analyzing the data. Sometimes, the search proved futile, when a promising link turned out to be a home video with someone walking in front of the camera.

But in all of the frames of movement recorded from the 10 different species they had viewed by that time, Lucas said, the pair of student researchers hit on something:

“We were actually going to a meeting with Dr. Colin and Dr. Costello, and we had plotted all of our numbers on a graph to make the data presentable. We looked at the graph and suddenly we saw this straight line, and thought this actually could be something really cool. So we expanded our search to more animal groups and got more replicates.”

The unexpected find was the similarity in the movement of all of the animals even though air is less dense than water. They looked at more videos and animal groups — 59 species, ranging from insects to whales — yet the line remained straight.

When Johnson graduated, Lucas took over the project. After this year’s winter break, she received word that the paper would be published February 2014 in the journal Nature Communications.

“I was really, really excited,” she said. “I think the first thing I did was step out of my office and tell my lab manager, ‘You’ll never believe what just happened!’”

Moving science forward

Dr. Colin said Lucas’ trajectory is exactly the intention of mentoring and the opportunity SURF provides — train students to do research, and prepare them for graduate school and a career in science, where publications are the primary metric to gauge how individuals progress.

The research relationship begins with strict instructions and guidance as students develop the necessary skills and confidence in their judgment.

“It moves from a relationship where you are instructing them to becoming more of a collaboration,” Dr. Colin said. “It becomes a give and take between professor and student. If a good student can get to that point, it helps influence the direction that research takes.”

Lucas’ journey began sophomore year, working with Dr. Colin, analyzing video of jellyfish, and wound up with two publications and lead authorship on a groundbreaking study. It was the perfect juncture of a lot of hard work and a little bit of happenstance

Dr. Colin noted, “Kelsey had two publications, and that’s pretty rare. She’s definitely an extraordinary student, probably one of the brightest students I’ve ever had.”

For Lucas, the Colin lab and the SURF program provided the best possible opportunity: “I ended up in the completely right place.”

Story by Amy Dunkle | from the Spring 2014 issue of The Current