OUR IMPACT
For over a decade, YURA has delivered world-class research opportunities across every field, run entirely by Yale undergraduates and supported by faculty and partners worldwide.
2025-2026 Academic Year
To our community,
I am so incredibly proud of the growth of our organization throughout this past year. Our mentorship program nearly doubled in size. Our research database was rebuilt from the ground up and is now beta-testing new functionality. Our conference reached the largest scope in Yale's history, welcoming a Nobel Prize winner and more than 500 researchers from around the world. Our journal expanded to its highest operational capacity to date.
All of that growth was delivered for students by students. Our program directors, associate directors and associates, driven by a desire to give back to young researchers here at Yale and across the world, did it all alongside their own coursework and their own research, and we kept every opportunity free and open to any Yale student.
It is a privilege to work alongside these students, and to do it with the support of our partners and our faculty trustees. I am incredibly excited for the year ahead.
Rishit Shaquib
Chairman of the Board of Trustees
The gap we work in
Yalies come from a tremendous variety of research backgrounds, and with an even greater variety of research interests. It can be daunting to navigate the enormous opportunity available here, and to make the most out of the experience.
YURA's mission stretches across the full range of undergraduate scholarship at Yale. Our programs help first-year students connect to opportunities and fellowships, mentor them through graduate and professional applications, award outstanding research, and bring world-changing researchers into their classrooms, so that when the work is finished they are ready to publish it in a peer-reviewed journal.
Every YURA program is built to close the gaps and quiet the fears that come with pursuing research at Yale, so students can confidently and capably pursue academic inquiry across all fields, from science and engineering to the humanities and social sciences.
Mentorship nearly doubled
One of our strongest engagements this past year came from YUMI, our graduate mentorship program. Mentee matches grew by 81 percent and the mentor pool by 53 percent.
The more important change is who those mentors are. A year ago the roster skewed heavily toward STEM. It now draws from every graduate and professional school at Yale, which means a student in history or the social sciences can find someone who has actually walked their path.
Mentees matched
175 → 316 +81%
Graduate mentors recruited
134 → 205 +53%
Foundational outreach
Our foundational programs engage a dramatic share of incoming students at Yale. Eighty-seven percent of the first-year class engages with YURA before the end of their first year, through programming, mentorship, events, or our newsletter.
Our work to widen access runs hand in hand with existing programming at Yale, giving first-generation and low-income students, and students with no prior research experience, the confidence to succeed here.
Keystone programs
Foundational outreach gets students through the door. Our keystone programs are what keep them engaged through the rest of their time at Yale, and what carry their work out into the world.
YURCResearch Conference
This year's conference reached the largest scope in Yale's history, welcoming a Nobel Prize winner and more than 500 researchers from institutions around the world. It has run for over a decade as the largest student-run undergraduate research conference in the country, across STEM, the humanities and the social sciences alike.
y/labsResearch Database
Our research database was rebuilt from the ground up this year in partnership with the Yale Computer Society. It now carries more than 5,000 faculty listings, fellowships and scholarships across every school and department, and new functionality is in beta testing now.
YURJResearch Journal
The only journal of undergraduate research at Yale. It published its fifth issue this year and has passed forty peer-reviewed articles, reviewed by graduate students across Yale, operating at its highest capacity to date.
Looking forward
We have a number of new initiatives underway, and a great deal to be excited about in the coming academic year.
International fellowships with institutions including Oxford and Cambridge, alongside expanded externship placements that open up greater career and research opportunities.
Expanded student grants programming, increasing the funding available for students to take on independent research and develop it into grants and ideas of their own.
A centralized y/labs, becoming the single hub for fellowships, research positions, career opportunities and funded positions, with a rollout planned for January 2027.
Dramatically expanded peer mentorship, with staffed peer liaisons to broaden our scope across campus.
Formalized partnerships with Yale graduate schools, academic partners and innovation partners, to make this growth durable.
Thank you to our partners
Every fellowship, award and event on this page exists because faculty, alumni, departments and corporate partners chose to back undergraduate research at Yale.
If your organization wants to reach a network of student researchers, or you would like to fund the next round of grants directly, we would like to hear from you.