The Student Research Initiatives (SRI) program connects motivated undergraduate and graduate students with cutting-edge research laboratories across campus. Our mission is to foster curiosity, develop technical skills, and promote hands-on discovery through collaborative research experiences. Students participating in SRI gain:

  • Mentorship from world-class faculty

  • Access to advanced equipment and research facilities

  • Opportunities to co-author papers and present at conferences

  • Experience that prepares them for graduate school, industry, or entrepreneurship

Participating Research Labs (Recruiting Students Now)

Below are the labs currently welcoming new student researchers.

1. Data Visualization and eXtended Reality (DVXR) Lab

Faculty Lead: Dr. Sharad Sharma
Research Areas:

  • Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented Reality (AR)
    Digital Twin (DT) & Health Informatics (HI)
    Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Software Engineering (SE)
    Data Visualization (DV) & Data Science (DS) 

Student Opportunities:

  • Research projects in the area of Data Science, Data Visualization, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Gaming, Agent based Modeling, 3D Animation, and Mobile App development.

  • The current list of research projects can be found at the Data Visualization and Extreme Reality (DVXR) Lab website.

Who Should Apply: Proficient in Unity 3D, Sketch-Up, C#, Java, Power BI, and Tableau will be preferred.
Apply Here: Interested students should send their Application Form, current resume and personal biographical statement of interest to Dr. Sharad Sharma at sharad.sharma@unt.edu

2. Intelligent Data Engineering & Analytics Lab

Faculty Lead: Dr. Haihua Chen
Research Areas:

  • Education, healthcare, legal intelligence, cyber security, scientific communication,

Student Opportunities:

  • Python programming

  • Building and testing data prototypes

  • Contributing to AI navigation algorithms

Who Should Apply: Data Science, Health Informatics, Engineering, CS.
Apply Here: link or email: haihua.chen@unt.edu

3. SCORE Lab

Faculty Lead: Dr. Gahangir Hossain
Research Areas:

  •  Cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and cognitive science to tackle the most pressing challenges in digital security and decision-making.

Student Opportunities:

  • We bridge technical depth with human-centered design to build intelligent, trustworthy, and adaptive systems for the future.

Who Should Apply: Data Science, Health Informatics, Engineering.
Apply Here: link or email: gahangir.hossain@unt.edu