You do not need to have run a simulation before. You need curiosity about why materials behave as they do, and the patience to make a calculation converge.
Every 2026 paper from this program has a Rose-Hulman undergraduate as first author. That is by design: projects are scoped so that a student who starts in September can have a converged, publishable result by the following summer.
The pattern is the same for everyone. Reproduce one result from the archived data (each manuscript's inputs and outputs are on Zenodo). Change one thing — a strain direction, a substrate, an isotope, a dopant. Understand what changed and why. Write it down. That last step becomes the paper.
Research can be taken for credit as a directed study, through the Rose Research Fellows program, or as a summer R-SURF fellowship. The guide, Defect-Based Quantum Sensors: A First-Principles Guide, is written for exactly this on-ramp.
Each card is a real next step from a paper in progress. Scope, background, and expected outcome are stated so you can judge the fit.
Email hashemi@rose-hulman.edu with your year, the courses you have taken in physics, chemistry, or programming, and which of the projects above caught your attention — or a question of your own. No CV needed. Office: Department of Physics, Optical Engineering, and NanoEngineering, Rose-Hulman.