CUREs is a program dedicated to expanding research opportunities for students in the Biology Department at Texas A&M.
Research experiences can be transformative for a student’s scientific career. We recognize the growing need to expand access to these opportunities, as traditional laboratory settings often have only a limited number of positions available for undergraduates. This program addresses that gap by providing a dedicated laboratory space designed to accommodate larger groups of undergraduates and engage them in authentic, hands-on research.
Each semester, select CUREs sections are uniquely paired with a Primary Investigator (PI) and an active research project within their laboratory. These sections are offered as BIOL 491 research courses. Enrolling in a CUREs section is equivalent to joining the PI’s lab, with research conducted in a dedicated CUREs laboratory space. As a student researcher, you will work alongside your peers on innovative and impactful projects.
All research carried out through CUREs has the potential for publication and to make meaningful contributions to the international scientific community.
Inspiring and nurturing scientific curiosity in the scientists of tomorrow!
Past CUREs Projects
How to Join
Each semester, sections and dates for open registration will be announced on the announcement board below.
A few important things to consider before registering for a section:
Please review the prerequisites carefully before signing up, as each section has specific requirements that must be met.
Additionally, this section is primarily focused on independent research. Students are responsible for completing the required credit hours accordingly. In most cases, these hours must be fulfilled during open lab times, which are generally available from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. each day.
Aside from the mandatory two-hour weekly meeting, students will have flexibility in managing their own schedules to ensure they complete their required credit hours.
Announcements
All sections are closed and in progress for Spring 2026
Summer Projects 2026
*Students can sign up for their project of choice during open registration on Howdy. Spots are first-come first serve.
Neural Circuit Reconstruction
Lillvis Lab
Prerequisites: BIOL 111, BIOL 112, BIOL 213
BIOL 491 Section 576 - 2 Credit Hours
BIOL 491 Section 580 - 3 Credit Hours
Neural circuits are the foundation of behavior. However, we know little about how circuit wiring changes with age and disease, how variations in wiring contribute to behavior variations found across individuals, or how wiring differences enable behaviors to evolve. Investigating these questions requires the synaptic structure of circuits to be compared across many animals, but current methods are too slow and costly to achieve this. To overcome these limitations, the Lillvis lab is developing new expansion microscopy-based methods to rapidly reconstruct neural circuits. This class will focus on evaluating these methods by analyzing brain images and reconstructing neural circuits in fruit flies, spiders, bees, and fish. The research we conduct will help us improve our expansion and imaging methods and generate fully automated methods to reconstruct neural circuits in the future.
Novel Virus Genome Discovery
Neuman Lab
Prerequisites: None
BIOL 291 Section 537 - 2 Credit Hours
BIOL 491 Section 567 - 2 Credit Hours
For every living organism, there is a virus that infects it. When people go out and sample an organism, sometimes that organism is sick with a virus. These accidental bycatch viruses are sequenced and stored in transcriptome databases. We're looking at neglected virus hosts because these kinds of viruses are under characterized, so we want to help in finding and describing them. By describing these viruses that infect these underrepresented hosts, we can better understand how all the viruses in that group function. The broader impacts of this work could be used for things like conservation efforts or pest control.
Students find viruses from the Transcriptome Shotgun Assembly (TSA) database using reference protein sequences via tBLASTn. The genome arrangement is then annotated and built using ORFfinder and HHPRED.
You can find more information about the project here: https://forms.gle/wPSAsakyLcZtJNbM7
Phylogenetic Signal in Chromosomal Traits
Blackmon Lab
Prerequisites: BIOL 111, BIOL 112, BIOL 213
Section Closed for Pre-Selected Students
In this CURE, students will investigate the evolutionary conservatism of chromosomal traits across diverse vertebrate clades. Students will collect real biological data from literature and databases, perform phylogenetic signal analyses, run simulations to model trait evolution and contribute to a publishable dataset and manuscript. The course integrates data science, evolutionary biology and collaborative research.
You can find more information about the project here: https://coleoguy.github.io/biolai-cure.html
Fall Sections TBA
Resources
Primary Investigators and Graduate Students
Contact Information
For more questions about the program contact Elizabeth Lillvis elillvis@tamu.edu HELD 412A