Coursework problems to connect fundamental concepts to cutting-edge research.
- Motivation
- List of Assignments by Subject
- Guide to Writing Problems from your Research
- Contribute Your Assignments to this Repository
- Bibliography
Engaging undergraduates in research has been shown to have numerous benefits for them. Students exposed to research opportunities have increased rates of retention in their undergraduate programs and increased interest in graduate school [1], career confidence outside of academia [2], and increased skills in independent work, among many other benefits [3,4]. Although the benefits of undergraduate involvement in research are well-established, many students face barriers to participation. Lack of knowledge and confidence in their own ability to participate in research, lack of exposure to research in coursework, and greater priority placed by institutions on coursework compared to research are frequently cited as barriers to participation, particularly among underrepresented groups and students of color [5,6].
One approach to address the barriers discussed above is to provide resources to integrate research into coursework without significantly altering course structure. Students themselves report that incorporating real life applications into homework increases the effectiveness of the homework assignments [7]. To this end, researchers in the community have developed a series of homework problems which can be integrated into existing undergraduate and graduate coursework. Each homework problem is based on the work performed in the associated manuscript. Students can read the associated research, and then perform the homework assignment with a better understanding of how fundamental scientific concepts covered in their coursework are applied to novel research.
This repository serves as a database to consolidate existing assignment problems available in the literature and as a guide for how you can contribute to this initiative.
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Calculating wall stress in a blood vessel using Law of Laplace from experimental data. Vargas et al., 2023: Biomechanical Remodeling of the Murine Descending Thoracic Aorta During Late-gestation Pregnancy.
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Calculating blood vessel stiffness and distensibility from experimental data. Vargas et al., 2024: Vascular Remodeling During Late-gestation Pregnancy: An In-vitro Assessment of the Murine Ascending Thoracic Aorta.
- Inverse parameter physical parameter estimation through genetic algorithm implementation. Sebastian et al., 2025: Image-Based Inverse Modeling Analysis of Iris Stiffness Across Sex in Patients With a History of Primary Angle-Closure Disease.
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Calculating Cauchy-Green deformation tensor analytically for incompressible materials. Thomas et al., 2019: A Computational Multi-scale Approach to Investigate Mechanically-induced Changes in Tricuspid Valve Anterior Leaflet Microstructure.
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Calculating Cauchy-Green deformation tensor and Green-Lagrange strain tensor from experimental data. Clarin et al., 2023: Mechanical Characterization of Porcine Tricuspid Valve Anterior Leaflets Over Time: Applications to Ex-vivo Studies.
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Calculating affine deformation of an elliptical cell nucleus from experimental data. Pakzadmanesh et al., 2024: Mechanically Induced Deformation of Nuclei in the Tricuspid Valve Interstitial Cells: Experimental Measurements and Multi-scale Computational Simulation.
- Calculating the natural frequency of a simplified 1DOF model of the brain. Jennings et al., 2024: Toward a Consistent Framework for Describing the Free Vibration Modes of the Brain.
- Calculating velocity of a line due to a rotation. Nwotchouang et al., 2020: Accuracy of Cardiac-induced Brain Motion Measurement Using Displacement-encoding With Stimulated Echoes (DENSE) Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): A Phantom Study.
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Comparing the results of parametric t-test with non-parametric Mann-Whitney tests of experimental data. Jennings et al., 2025: Measurement and Assessment of Head-to-Helmet Contact Forces
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Calculating sex-related bias in abstract submissions. Sebastian et al., 2024: Meta Data Analysis of Sex Distribution of Study Samples Reported in Summer Biomechanics, Bioengineering, and Biotransport Annual Conference Abstracts
The contents of this section provide general guidance on how to write an assignment problem based on your research manuscript and should not be considered to be restrictive. Submissions will not be rejected if they do not meet the criteria below, but from the experience of the authors the following guidelines yield the most digestible problems for students. Below are a set of "best-practice" principles for translating your research to a digestible problem:
- Consider starting at "back-of-the-napkin" calculations you performed during the course of the research you performed to validate your ideas. Such calculations are generally approachable for a non-expert. For an example of this approach, see Vargas et al., 2023.
- Alternatively, consider starting from an existing textbook problem in a relevant undergraduate textbook, and modify the context and problem formulation to reflect the research performed. For an example of this approach, see Jennings et al., 2024.
- The problem should not require an exhaustive read of the manuscript. Rather, the student should be able to gather the necessary context for the problem from a cursory skim of the manuscript and its salient takeaways.
- We encourage the manuscript to also contain a non-technical/plain-language summary [8,9] to increase the accessibility to students who may not have advanced knowledge in the subject.
- If raw data is required for computing the results, the data should be included in the manuscript via an online repository or supplementary material.
- We encourage authors to attach their homework problem as an appendix to their manuscript and include the keyword "homework" for easier indexing of the available papers.
We encourage authors to also cite this repository in the section containing their homework problem to increase the visibility of this resource to other researchers engaged in teaching.
Once you have an accepted manuscript with an assignemnt included, there are two options for you to add your research assignments to this repository:
- Contact the repository administrators.
- Commit directly to the repository.
If you are not familiar with github, please email the administrators of this repository:
Please use the subject line "Research Homework Problems Contribution" and include the following information:
- A concise description of the homework problem.
- The authors and year of publication, with a link to the DOI of the manuscript.
- The title of the manuscript
- Click the "Fork" button at the top right of this repository's page to create a copy in your GitHub account.
- Edit the README file to include your manuscript in the "List of Assignments by Subject" section. Editing can be performed either by cloning to your local machine and editing there, or by editing using the built-in Github Markdown editor. Please follow the existing formatting and include:
- A concise description of the homework problem.
- The authors and year of publication, with a link to the DOI of the manuscript.
- The title of the manuscript
- Edit the homeworkreferences.bib file to include the bibtex entry for your manuscript. Editing can be performed either by cloning to your local machine and editing there, or by editing using the built-in Github text editor.
- Commit your changes to your forked repository.
- Submit a pull request by going to the original repository and clicking on "Compare & Pull Request". Add a brief note about the changes made and submit the pull request for review.
[1] Susan H. Russell et al., Benefits of Undergraduate Research Experiences. Science. 316, 548-549 (2007). DOI
[2] Christopher R. Madan and Braden D. Teitge, The Benefits of Undergraduate Research: The Student's Perspective. The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal. 15, 1-3 (2013). Accessed
[3] David Lopatto, Survey of Undergraduate Research Experiences (SURE): First Findings. Cell Biology Education. 3(4), 270-277 (2004). DOI
[4] Chad T. Miller et al., Engaging Undergraduate Students in Research. HortTechnology. 33(1), 1-7 (2023). DOI
[5] Yusuff A. Adebisi, Undergraduate Students' Involvement in Research: Values, Benefits, Barriers, and Recommendations. Annals of Medicine and Surgery. 81, 104384 (2022). DOI
[6] Sophie Pierszalowski et al., A Systematic Review of Barriers to Accessing Undergraduate Research for STEM Students: Problematizing Under-Researched Factors for Students of Color. Social Sciences. 10(9), 328 (2021). DOI
[7] Kresimir Fertalj et al., Problems and Expectations with Student Projects Based on Real-world Problems: a Case Study. Technics Technologies Education Management. 8(1), 176-186 (2013) Accessed
[8] Nicholas B. Tiller et al., The Nontechnical Summary: A New Initiative to Enhance the Translation of Sports Science Research and Reduce the Spread of Misinformation. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. 34(6), 337-339 (2024). DOI
[9] Hannah FitzGibbon et al., Where are Biomedical Research Plain-language Summaries? Health Science Reports. 3(3), e175 (2020). DOI