National Undergraduate Research Network
Connecting students with research opportunities across universities.
ResearchMatch helps undergraduate students discover research opportunities while enabling professors, laboratories, and campus organizations to reach motivated student researchers through trusted academic networks.
ResearchMatch Preview
Behavioral Economics Research Assistant
Example alignment across Economics, Psychology, and Public Policy research groups
Strong profile alignment
This preview illustrates how a student profile could be compared with research opportunities based on academic interests, skills, department preferences, and stated research goals.
Why This Needs to Exist
Undergraduate research needs a central discovery layer.
At many universities, research opportunities are scattered across department pages, faculty websites, advising offices, email lists, and informal personal networks. ResearchMatch is designed to create a centralized national platform where students can discover research opportunities and professors can connect with motivated undergraduate researchers more efficiently.
The Challenge
Research access is valuable, but the discovery process remains fragmented.
Undergraduate research can shape academic interests, graduate school preparation, career direction, and faculty mentorship. Yet the process of finding relevant opportunities is often inconsistent, decentralized, and dependent on existing relationships.
Students lack a centralized discovery process.
Many undergraduates are interested in research but do not know which laboratories, professors, or departments are actively seeking student involvement.
Professors need more targeted student outreach.
Faculty members and research teams often rely on limited local networks, referrals, or scattered postings to identify capable undergraduate researchers.
High-potential research alignments are often overlooked.
Students and research groups with compatible interests may never connect because the current discovery process is decentralized and inconsistent.
Student Pain Points
What students often experience before finding research.
These examples reflect common frustrations ResearchMatch is designed to address. They should later be replaced or supplemented with real student feedback collected from early users.
“I want to get involved in research, but I do not know which professors are actually open to undergraduate help.”
Common student frustration
Research discovery“Most opportunities seem to come through word of mouth. If you are not already connected, it is difficult to know where to begin.”
Common student frustration
Network access“I wish there were one place where I could compare research opportunities by field, school, professor, and required skills.”
Common student frustration
Opportunity comparisonHow ResearchMatch Works
A campus-by-campus network for research discovery.
ResearchMatch is designed to combine software with trusted university relationships. The platform grows through student ambassadors, faculty outreach, verified research pathways, and partnerships with campus organizations.
Students create research profiles.
Students describe their academic interests, research goals, technical skills, prior experience, and availability.
Opportunities are organized across campuses.
Listings are structured by university, department, professor, research area, required skills, and expected commitment.
ResearchMatch improves student-project alignment.
The platform highlights relevant connections between student profiles and faculty-led projects, laboratories, and independent research pathways.
Platform Participants
Built for the people who make undergraduate research possible.
For Students
- Create one profile to communicate academic interests and research goals.
- Discover opportunities by university, field, professor, skill, and commitment level.
- Identify pathways that align with graduate school, career, or intellectual goals.
- Reduce reliance on cold emails and fragmented department pages.
For Professors and Research Teams
- Reach students who are actively seeking research involvement.
- Communicate project expectations, qualifications, and application steps clearly.
- Develop a stronger pipeline of undergraduate research assistants.
- Reduce repetitive outreach and improve candidate fit.
Campus Network Strategy
ResearchMatch becomes stronger with every campus relationship.
The long-term advantage is not only the website. It is the network of students, professors, campus ambassadors, research clubs, and verified university pathways that make the platform increasingly useful and difficult to replicate.
Launch through warm university networks where students and faculty can help identify existing research pathways and unmet discovery needs.
Phase 1
Relationship-led campus launchOrganize research opportunities into clear campus-specific pages that make undergraduate research easier to understand and access.
Phase 2
Verified opportunity mappingUse profile data, field interests, and campus networks to improve the quality of student-research team alignment over time.
Phase 3
National research matching network1
central student research profile
50+
target universities over time
4
core participant groups
Early Access
Help build a more accessible undergraduate research ecosystem.
ResearchMatch is currently developing its early network of students, professors, research teams, campus ambassadors, and university organizations.