Spend a summer in Paris with all travel, lodging, and meals covered and also get a $7000.00 stipend
The Program - Summer 2026
Applications for Summer 2026 are now closed
We have submitted a proposal to extend our program through 2028.
As of today, March 24th, 2026, we have not heard anything from NSF.
We have been able to use funds remaining from our last NSF contract and have been granted a no-cost extension from NSF to allow us to use them. These funds, with additional funds from the University of Michigan have allowed us to admit 4 students. We have now filled those positions.
Unfortunately, we cannot accept any more students until we have the funds. If NSF tells us that they plan to fund us, it will take a few weeks for our university to finalize the award and have the funds transferred.
Our French colleagues have told us that they need, at a minimum, two months to do security checks before they can issue badges for our students to work in the French labs. Even if NSF told us today that we were going to be funded, we would not have the funds at Michigan until after April 1st, beyond the deadline for security checks.
Unfortunately, we will not be able to admit any more students for this summer.
Participants will arrive in Ann Arbor on May 25th, Fly to Paris on Friday evening May 29th, Arrive in Paris on Saturday morning May 30th. Participants will travel home on July 30th
The Optics in the City of Light REU program will hopefully be funded by Physics Division of NSF through the Summer of 2028
One of the founders of the Optics in the City of Light REU, Gérard Mourou, just hearing that he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2018!!!
2026 Tentative Schedule
| January 19, 2026 | Application Deadline |
| May 25 - May 29, 2026 | Ann Arbor |
| May 30 - July 30, 2026 | Paris |
This year the Optics in the City of Light Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) will offer 8 undergraduate junior level students the opportunity to spend 2 months in a variety of laboratories in Paris performing research with a wide range of ultrafast lasers. Optics, especially the new discoveries in Extreme Light, is one of the most exciting areas of science. Students in this program will experience strong collaborative science that is currently taking place between University of Michigan (UM) Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science (GM-CUOS), University Paris-Saclay, Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Nationale de Techniques Avancées (ENSTA), Université Paris-Sud 11 Orsay, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, and l’Institut d' Optique Graduate School.
Students will spend one week in Ann Arbor at GM-CUOS for orientation, safety training, preparation for living in France, and immersion into the Ann Arbor laboratories of the REU faculty. Students will also learn basic lab skills as well as basic reporting skills. Students will begin the weekly reporting process that involves preparing a summary and analysis of the previous week’s work. Each student will also prepare a short presentation describing what they think they will be doing for their research in France. These presentations will be sent to the faculty involved in each project. In addition, each student will maintain an electronic notebook (a blog) that all team members will be able to access.
GM-CUOS, University Paris-Saclay, ENSTA, Université Paris-Sud 11 Orsay, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, Ecole Polytechnique, and l’Institut d’Optique are among the premier ultrafast optics laboratories in the world and are equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation. For its first 13 years GM-CUOS was funded in part by an NSF STC. The director of that center was Professor Gérard Mourou. Gérard and the members of the original center (half of our senior personnel) have had long-standing collaborations with LOA, the Louvre, and Ecole Polytechnique. Much of the research that has been developed at GM-CUOS is also conducted at the institutions at Palaiseau. The world’s highest intensity focused laser was at GM-CUOS but has been surpassed by the laser at ELI in France. GM-CUOS has now built a user facility, ZEUS, that is the country's highest intensity ultrafast laser. Both institutions have a large number of ultrafast lasers and diagnostic tools. The students will have access to all of the facilities in the French institutions as well as libraries associated with each institution and University of Michigan.
- You must be a junior about to enter your senior year at the end of the summer.
- You must be a US citizen or a green card holder.
- You must have your valid passport when the applications are due.
- You must submit a URL for a YouTube video telling us about yourself. The video MUST be 1 minute or shorter.
We seek to identify students who are passionate about science and discovery and who are eager to explore other societies and their cultures
Preference is given to students who attend institutions where research is not the primary focus. All eligible students are strongly encouraged to apply.