Mentored Undergraduate Research Challenge

The Mentored Undergraduate Research Challenge (MURC) is an opportunity for undergraduate students to experience the complete research life-cycle for a semester or summer, working under the guidance of a mentor. For the 2025 MURC, the topic was "Playing Word Association Games". Participants asked questions about how AI-based systems can choose words that not only go together, but also satisfy other player's interests, personalities, and more, when they evaluate whether they like the word selections. Five teams completed the challenge, exploring a variety of problems and approaches that contribute to innovations in the topic's research area.