Delaware Bridge Program
Welcome to the Delaware BRIDGE Program offered by the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware. This two-year, post-baccalaureate fellowship program is designed to provide students from underrepresented groups (first-generation college students, students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, underrepresented minorities) with intensive training in data science, which they apply to studying the brain and behavior. Along with graduate-level coursework, BRIDGE scholars engage in mentored research and professional development from multiple mentors at our university. Our goal is to provide students with the experience necessary to be competitive for graduate school. After completing the program, all BRIDGE scholars will receive a certificate in Data Science and Psychology from the University of Delaware.
We are looking for applicants who will be competitive for graduate school but may not yet have competitive applications for graduate school. All applicants must be U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents and have a bachelor's degree upon starting the program. We strongly encourage applications from students who have faced significant challenges (e.g., first-generation college student, low-income backgrounds) to apply.
Thanks to generous support from the National Science Foundation and the University of Delaware, all BRIDGE scholars will receive full financial support during the program.
Program Information
How to Apply
- Apply through the Graduate College, Admissions (button at left).
- For program of student, select "Data Science and Behavior (Certificate)."
- No application fee is required.
- The application deadline is March 1, 2024.
Admissions Criteria
- U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident
- Have recently obtained (or will obtain before starting the program) a bachelor's degree
- As part of your admissions materials, participants will be asked to provide the following:
- Undergraduate transcript: Unofficial transcripts are fine for admission. If selected for the program, you need to submit official transcripts before officially entering the program.
- Curriculum vitae
- Two letters of recommendation
- A statement of interest describing your interest and intent to pursue a career in data science and behavior.
- No prior research is necessary.
Prospective students are also welcome to optionally submit additional information that would help their application. This includes:
- Self-reported standardized test scores (SAT, ACT, GRE)
- Examples of written work
Statement of Interest
We are looking for curious students who are interested in pursuing a career using data science skills to understand behavior and the brain, broadly defined. Please use the statement to communicate the following information. Your statement of interest should be no longer than three pages, double-spaced (10-point font):
- Describe specific challenges (e.g., low-income background, racial discrimination) that you believe may have impeded your development as a scholar thus far.
- Clearly discuss your interest in understanding behavior and/or the brain.
- Discuss why you want to do research with your potential primary advisor.
Bridge Scholars will take coursework with a strong focus on data science and behavior. This will include a three-semester series in statistics and data science, two courses in human behavior/neuroscience based on their own research interests, and one elective (approved by the faculty advisor). Students will also be asked to attend the regular seminar for their own department. The course sequence and descriptions follow.
Mentor Selection
Faculty who are currently mentoring students are listed on the faculty mentor page. We ask all applicants to reach out to potential faculty mentors well before turning in your application to find out their planned projects. On the application, please list your top three mentors (and make sure to discuss your interest in their research in your statement of interest). Upon receiving an offer, we will also list who your primary mentor will be.
Research Project Execution
Bridge scholars will run their research project during their two years in the program. This project will be provided to the student by the Bridge mentor. To complete the program, participants will need to write a report on their research, similar in style to a scientific journal article. Furthermore, students will also give a spoken presentation of their research at a Bridge program presentation day. The dates for deliverables related to their research project are as follows:
- Scholar year 1, July 15, research project outline due (feedback by August 1)
- Scholar year 2, October 1, first draft of research project paper due (feedback by Oct. 15)
- Scholar year 2, November 15, final draft of research project paper due
- Scholar year 2, first week of December, research presentation day
These dates ensure that Bridge scholars have a sample of written work and research presentation experience that can be included in their graduate school application (with most graduate school applications due in December). Students will also be strongly encouraged to present their research at scientific conferences, with some travel for EPSCoR Bridge scholars supported by grant funds.
Research Proposal
After developing research, writing and presentation experience during the project execution phase, students will have experience in research on a given topic. The next step is generating a novel empirical idea that can be executed via experimentation and data analysis. In graduate school interviews, a common question asked is about future research: what kinds of questions does the student want to address, and how would they address them? These interviews often happen early in spring semester, and it is important for Bridge scholars to have thought deeply about research ideas before interviewing. Additionally, employees from private industry in related fields (e.g., data science, user experience) will often expect that advanced candidates are able to reason from an abstract problem to proposed solutions.
With guidance from their faculty advisor, students will write their own research proposal on a topic of interest to them. This research proposal will consist of two parts: a short literature review in which they identify a “gap" in the literature, and then a section in which they identify a research question and design an experiment to empirically examine this question. The primary goal here will be to consider theoretical models in the scholar's field of interest and then design experiments to test existing models or introduce new models and/or hypotheses that explain previous findings better.
The due dates are as follows: outline, January 15 of scholar year 2 (SY2); first draft, March 15 of SY2; formal advisor feedback by April 1 of SY2; final draft on April 15 of SY2.
Faculty Mentors
Select any faculty member at the University of Delaware who studies behavior, the brain, and/or data science (broadly defined) can mentor students in this program. The following faculty are available to serve as mentors.
Psychology and Neuroscience
Linguistics and Cognitive Science
- Alon Hafri (interactions between language and vision)
