By Rick Vacek | August 26, 2025
Research is considered an essential part of the student experience at The University of Texas at Dallas, and undergraduates aren’t just included – they’re eagerly invited.
“UT Dallas is a place where having undergrads in your lab is seen as a good thing,” said Dr. Donal Skinner, Dean of the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College. “We want to maximize that.”
The Honors College maximizes it every year with the Summer Platform for Undergraduate Research (SPUR) symposium, which features the work of participants in the Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program (URAP).
Students who have completed two or three years of study are eligible to spend the summer in the URAP, which requires at least 300 hours of work. The culmination is presenting their work at the SPUR.
The idea is to give undergrads a preview of the lab work they could be doing as graduate students, but for many it is an introduction.
“This is my first research experience ever,” said Kristen Heng, a chemistry major who worked in the lab of Dr. Sheel Dodani, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Fellow, Eugene McDermott Distinguished Professor, in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
“I had done only labs in class. I knew nothing about research. I knew nothing about a PhD. I knew nothing about what it meant to work in a lab and how you go about getting your PhD and what you can do after you graduate – I had no idea about any of that.
“I really got to see what it’s like to work in a university’s research lab alongside graduate students, and I love that they let me perform experiments by myself. I got to ask a ton of questions. I got to see firsthand how you go about executing a project and what you do when you come into issues when something didn’t work the way you thought it would.”
The project also produced a thought that could result in her career not working out the way she thought it would.
“I still want to go toward a pre-med, but I am more open to doing research if I end up not wanting to be a doctor anymore,” she said.
Another purpose of the URAP is to expand students’ knowledge of subjects related to their major.
Tarun Anand learned about the URAP through the Jindal Undergraduate Research Scholar (JURS) program, offered by the Naveen Jindal School of Management (JSOM), and benefited from a summer of exploring ways to balance transparency and confidentiality in investment strategies driven by artificial intelligence (AI).
“It gave me a platform where I could express my research and a focused way to do my research,” the finance major said. “Before this, I wasn’t sure where to start.”
His research explored two main strategies – premium, which targets opportunities to exploit price discrepancies between different international markets, and asset, a market-neutral approach.
And how much did he learn?
“A lot. I basically knew nothing about this prior to this except for AI governance and ethics as it pertains to financial markets. Getting a hands-on experience with the code and the relationships between all these assets and getting to know how they combine to identify entry and exit points to effectively trade was a good step.”
Hearing about these students’ successes makes Skinner smile. He is particularly thrilled about the growth of research in JSOM and other non-science schools.
“I have a philosophy that research is for everyone,” he said. “It’s not just for the chemistry and biology majors that one usually associates with research. I see students’ creative projects as areas we’d love to grow.”
It’s all about giving undergraduates more research opportunities, whether they’re on campus during the summer, want to study abroad or simply are looking for ways to add to their resume.
“It’s maximizing what we can do at UT Dallas and providing these very meaningful 10-, 12-week research experiences,” Skinner said. “The best way to describe it is that it’s beautiful.”
And essential.
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