Since its launch, YREP has grown into a vibrant research community at Ransom Everglades. Our students have designed and built custom lab equipment, contributed to real-world conservation efforts, and explored cutting-edge topics like optical tweezing, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), and shark tracking.

We’re especially proud that YREP students don’t just learn about science—they do science. Their work has been presented at professional conferences including the APS March Meeting and the APS Global Physics Summit, where they’ve shared research alongside university faculty and graduate students.

From mangrove ecology to marine biophysics, our students are making meaningful contributions to science—and having fun doing it.

Unlike many high school research programs that focus on short-term, individual projects or summer internships, YREP offers students the opportunity to engage in long-term, collaborative research that mirrors the structure and rigor of university labs. Students are not simply conducting isolated experiments—they are contributing to larger, multi-year research objectives led by experienced mentors, many of whom hold PhDs in their fields.

YREP projects are intentionally designed to evolve, with each cohort of student researchers building on the work of those who came before them. This creates a true research continuum—much like in a university setting—where a principal investigator (PI) oversees a long-term vision while mentoring a rotating team of students, similar to graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in a professional lab.

This structure provides students with a deeper, more authentic understanding of how science is conducted. They learn how to navigate the challenges of real-world experimentation, contribute to shared datasets, revise and improve designs, and work as part of a scientific team. By the time they present at professional conferences, YREP students understand not only the content of their research but also the culture of research—collaboration, persistence, and the pursuit of meaningful discovery.