The Rubin Undergraduate Network (RUN) is a volunteer organization of students, faculty, and staff at academic institutions across the U.S. and the world who wish to promote and support the use of Rubin data for undergraduate-level astronomy research. RUN recognizes the unique challenges of research at the undergraduate level (time conflicts with other academic responsibilities and student employment, limited time until graduation, little or no prior research experience, limited mentorship time available, etc.) and we are dedicated to providing the resources needed to aid both students and their mentors in completing successful projects before students move on to graduate school or the workforce.

This breakout session will focus on RUN's current efforts in three categories:

1) Creating new resources, and buliding upon those already present in the Rubin community to ease undergraduates into the potentially overwhelming environment of retrieving and analyzing various types of Rubin data for use in research.

2) Establishing and maintaining lines of communication between undergraduate-serving insitutions in order to share useful resources and promote the accomplishments of undergraduate researchers.

3) Collecting and curating existing resources in order to provide a "one-stop shop" for students and their mentors to acquire the assistance they need and learn skills useful for Rubin-based research.

We will then conclude our session with three undergraduate research presentations.

Anyone from the Rubin community is welcomed to join us! More information, along with our current membership list, can be found at our website graciously hosted by the LSST Discovery Alliance: https://lsstdiscoveryalliance.org/rubin-undergraduate-network/

Breakout Session Schedule

10:30-10:40: An Introduction to RUN (M. Pitts) - Session participants will be introduced to what RUN is, its goals, and a brief summary of what has been accomplished thus far.

10:40-11:20: Current RUN Efforts

RUN Undergraduate Projects Showcase (M. Solontoi) - This section will be a showcase of "RUN Projects" designed to be completed by inexperienced undergraduates wanting to perform research using Rubin data.

Lines of Communication (T. Adair) - This section will be an overview of how RUN can help in highlighting undergraduate Rubin-related research and project it out to the larger Rubin and astronomical communities.

Non-RUN Resources for Undergraduates (J. Cash) - This section will cover our effort to collect and organize useful resources already available online for undergraduates wishing to perform Rubin-related research.

Undergraduate Research Presentations

11:25 - 11:35: Virginia (Gina) Johnson (Univ. California, Santa Cruz): "Low Surface Brightness Detections and Analyses of Galaxy Substructures using Rubin’s DP1"

11:35 - 11:45: Sierra Blackhurst (San José State Univ.): “A Comparative Study of Dwarf Galaxy Morphologies in Euclid and Rubin Imaging Data” 

11:45 - 11:55: Bilva Gummadi (San José State Univ.): “Dwarf Galaxies in the Virgo Cluster Using Rubin First Look Imaging”

11:55-12:00: Outro and How to Join RUN (M. Pitts)