Current undergraduate students interested in exploring research have a unique opportunity to work with a multidisciplinary group of undergraduate students, graduate students, research staff, and faculty members to tackle novel research and design problems. Academic credit for your participation in the design and discovery efforts can also be earned, and you may even be included in the publishing of research papers. You will assist faculty and graduate students with research and development issues in their areas of expertise.
The 2026-2027 Fall Quarter VIP program teams include:
- Accelerating Pharmaceutical Process Development with Robotics and Machine Learning (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew McDonald)
- AI-Driven Robotic Manipulation (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Lifeng Zhou)
- An Integrative Approach for Sustainable Water Management Using Spatial Data and Data-driven Tools (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Amanda Carneiro Marques)
- Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Nondestructive Evaluation (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Arvin Ebrahimkhanlou)
- Astroparticle Physics in Extreme Locations (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Christina Love)
- Circular Buildings & Cities: Understanding decision-making in circular economy across sectors, and predicting material flows from new and existing buildings in Philadelphia (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Fernanda Cruz Rios)
- Cognitive Neuroengineering for the Brain and Mind (Faculty Mentors: Dr. John Medaglia and Dr. Gary Friedman)
- Coordination and Planning for Multi-Robot Systems (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Lifeng Zhou)
- Data-Driven Circular Economy and Robotic Evaluation for Circular Lifecycle Assessment of Infrastructure Materials (RECLAIM) (Faculty Mentors: Dr. Arvin Ebrahimkhanlou & Dr. Fernanda Cruz Rios)
- Detecting Cyberattacks in Traffic Systems Using Data Analytics and Machine Learning (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Liang Zhang)
- DriveSmart, WorkSafe (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Zhiwei Chen)
- Emergent coordinate systems for organizing massively parallel robotic swarms (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Bryan VanSaders)
- Foundation Models for Autonomous Driving (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Lifeng Zhou)
- Language Models with Iterative Self Attention (LISA) (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Anup Das)
- Neuroergonomics and Neuroengineering for Brain Health and Performance Research (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Hasan Avaz)
- Ukraine Sovereign Recovery Through a Sustainability Lens (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joseph Hughes)
For more information and each of these teams, please download the Fall Quarter 2026-2027 information packet.
In order to participate in VIP, you must formally apply and be accepted to a specific team. To apply, please log into ForagerOne and search for “VIP”. This will bring up all available open positions tagged as VIP projects. When submitting an application, please be sure to have uploaded an updated résumé to your ForagerOne profile and to include a statement regarding why you are interested in working on the team to which you are applying.
Please note that VIP team participation requires registration for the accompanying VIP course section. The number of credits required per quarter is flexible and will be determined on a case-by-case basis in consultation with the team's faculty mentor and a student's academic advisor; however, most VIP team members will register for a single credit per quarter. Long-term, sustained participation in the program (three or more quarters of working on a single team) is strongly encouraged and may be required in order for earned VIP credits to count towards degree requirements. More information will be provided to all applicants who are offered a position.
Should you have any questions about a particular team, please feel free to reach out to the team’s faculty mentor listed above; they will be pleased to talk with you. Any questions regarding the VIP program in general should be sent to Chad Morris via email at cam83@drexel.edu.