Student experience

Mayo Clinic's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) gives you more than just work experience in a lab. As a SURF fellow, you will:

• Conduct your own small research project or work on part of an ongoing research investigation for 10 weeks
• Develop your technical skills
• Participate in a special weekly seminar series that introduces you to rapidly progressing research areas
• Engage in special events organized by graduate programs or your labs
• Present your work at the Summer Research Poster Session
• Become part of the Mayo Clinic research community

Seminar series

Each week a faculty member from one of our eight graduate programs will share some of the newest discoveries in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Biomedical Engineering and Physiology, Clinical and Translation Sciences, Immunology, Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Neuroscience, Regenerative Sciences, and Virology and Experiments.

Research poster session

Every year, students and mentors alike look forward to the end-of-the-summer research poster session. In preparation for the event, you’ll create a research poster showcasing your work and then have a chance to explain your research and findings, as well as celebrate your summer of research with your fellow SURF participants.

Research by past participants

Each summer brings a variety of research questions and projects. Here are a few examples students have worked on in recent past years: 

• Investigating a Novel Drug Combination Therapy using Endometrial Cancer Cell Lines in vitro
• Guiding and Monitoring the Differentiation of Encapsulated Stem Cells
• Deep learning noise quantification of patient CT images: training dataset generation and analysis
• Aging Effects on Skeletal Muscle Autophagy
• Identifying Potential Biomarkers in Diagnosing Patients with Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome: Utilizing the Mayo Clinic EDS Clinic
• Health disparities in pregnancy care and public insurance
• A Balancing Act: Combining Standard of Care Medications with T Cell Immunotherapy for Treatment of Multiple Myeloma
• The Sensitizing Effects of TRAF2 Deficiency on TNF- and IFNy-Induced Cancer Cell Death
• Utilizing Molecular Dynamics Simulations to Characterize Pathogenic and Benign KCNQ1 Variants Involved in Long-QT Syndrome
• Characterizing a Novel Risk Haplotype for 5-Fluorouracil Toxicity
• Effect of Bleomycin Induced Cellular Senescence on Brain Dysfunction 
• Preserving Isolated Mitochondria Vitality for Regenerative Applications
• Characterization of extracellular vesicles from iPSC-derived mesenchymal stem cells for regenerative medicine
• Developing a Single-Cycle Measles Vector for Gene Editing Sickle Cell Disease
• In vitro characterization of MC0-R Mengovirus as a novel vector for oncolytic