AiMi Research Program
A mentor-guided program for students ready to investigate an important question, work with evidence, and communicate findings with academic integrity.
Who it is for
Designed for motivated high school students who want to move beyond classroom assignments and learn how original research is developed, evaluated, and communicated. Appropriate preparation depends on the selected project.
Admission is selective. Topic acceptance depends on feasibility, appropriate preparation, responsible research design, and verified mentor availability.
Deep mentor involvement
Each project has a professor mentor—from defining a feasible question and choosing appropriate methods to reviewing evidence, challenging interpretation, strengthening drafts, and preparing the student for external review or presentation. Professor mentors teach and evaluate; students make the decisions and own the work.
Professor mentors are matched by subject and method, not merely by affiliation. A mentor’s institutional affiliation does not imply that the institution sponsors or endorses the program.
Six Academic Standards
The standards protect student ownership, research integrity, and the credibility of the final work.
Students follow appropriate standards for sources, attribution, data use, authorship, conflicts, privacy, safety, and competition rules. Projects requiring formal approval may not proceed without it.
Students understand, perform, document, and defend their own work. Mentors teach, review, question, and guide, but do not write or fabricate work.
Mentors review intellectual logic, feasibility, methods, evidence, limitations, and communication throughout the project.
Projects advance through defined gates for question, literature, methods, ethics, analysis, interpretation, draft, and presentation readiness.
Evaluation considers rigor, ownership, reasoning, execution, response to feedback, communication, and next-step readiness.
Admission depends on readiness, commitment, feasibility, mentor fit, timing, and the Academy’s ability to support the work responsibly.
Research process
Move from a broad interest to a focused, researchable question.
Understand prior work, evidence gaps, and appropriate sources.
Select data, analytical approaches, evaluation criteria, or experimental logic.
Conduct the work, examine limitations, and separate evidence from assumption.
Produce and revise a paper, poster, technical report, presentation, or suitable artifact.
Formal outcomes & next-stage pathways
The capstone is the guaranteed educational destination. Academy showcases and external opportunities are distinct next stages, each with its own readiness and eligibility gate.
Core capstone
Every student builds a substantive final body of work.A defensible body of original work matched to the student’s question, methods, and available evidence.
Built into the program; final format follows the project.
Academy showcase
Students communicate and defend the work for a real audience.A structured setting to explain the question, methods, findings, limitations, and next steps to an audience.
Available when a symposium is scheduled for the cohort.
External pathway
Qualified projects may be prepared for a third-party venue.Preparation for an appropriate local, regional, or Society-affiliated fair after an eligibility and rules review.
Conditional on eligibility, approvals, timing, and project readiness.
Review the official pathwayMentor-guided preparation for academic review when the work has an appropriate venue, contribution, and evidence base.
Submission, acceptance, presentation, and publication are separate verified states; none is guaranteed.
Project format and external submission opportunities depend on topic, student readiness, timeline, data availability, and third-party eligibility rules. Participation does not guarantee publication, competition entry, awards, or college admission.
Flexible, milestone-based delivery
Current cohort dates, duration, meeting frequency, and capacity will be published only after they are confirmed.
A deeply mentored path shaped around a feasible question, methods, and student readiness.
Shared foundations and critique with project-specific mentor guidance.
Live mentorship and milestones delivered online or within a selected partner school.
