UTC senior chemistry student Neel Patel will spend the summer conducting research in Paris through a competitive international program. Photo by Angela Foster.
When senior chemistry major Neel Patel found out that he would be studying abroad this summer in Paris at Sorbonne University—one of the most prestigious universities in the world—he ran around Chamberlain Field doing “heel clicks” with three of his friends.
“It was a nice little moment because everyone was looking at us like, ‘What are they doing?’ recalled Patel, also an Innovations in Honors student in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Honors College.
The celebration followed a phone call from a coordinator for the International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program. Patel was outside the UTC Library when he was offered a spot.
“My mouth was to the floor,” he said. “I was just so happy.”
Patel, UTC’s reigning homecoming king who hails from Hendersonville, Tennessee, was selected as one of just seven students for this year’s cohort. Seventy-five students applied.
The IRES program, funded by the National Science Foundation, places undergraduate and graduate students in an international research environment, giving them lab experience while building a global STEM workforce.
This summer, Patel will spend 11 weeks in Paris working in the Soft Matter Science and Engineering Laboratory, where he will study polymers—specifically hydrogels and their applications in advanced materials. The work builds on his current honors thesis at UTC, where he studies polyurethane foams embedded with molecules that change color under stress.
“It’s like a visual way of mapping force without using an electronic sensor,” he explained.
Another “plus” of Sorbonne University, Patel said, is its connection to Marie Curie, whose work in radioactivity helped shape modern chemistry and physics. Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.
“It was where Marie Curie had her radioactive notebook,” he said. “It blew my mind. I was like, ‘Marie Curie was there.’”
Patel, who hails from Hendersonville, Tennessee, first learned about the opportunity during his sophomore year, when Honors College Dean Linda Frost encouraged him to apply for a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program.
At the time, he didn’t feel ready to pursue an international placement.
“I was like, ‘Oh wow, I can’t do anything international yet,’ because I had literally no research experience,” he said.
Instead, he applied to domestic programs and was accepted into a REU program at the University of Kansas, where he began building his research experience needed for opportunities abroad.
In Europe, undergraduate students typically do not conduct research, so Patel will be enrolled as a temporary master’s-level researcher during his time abroad.
“I’ll basically be a master’s student for three months,” he said with a smile. “Which is really cool.”
He is also excited to explore and figure things out on his own in a new country, he said. He wants to use his time outside the lab to explore neighboring cities and countries.
In his application, he wrote about his parents, who immigrated to the United States from India.
“They came to the U.S. knowing nothing,” he said. “New culture, new language, new everything.
“Being on my own and navigating a country by myself is something that I want to correlate to the lens of my parents. Maybe I can get closer with them and understand them better.”
After graduation, Patel is considering graduate school, with an interest in materials science and interdisciplinary research. This is exactly what the IRES program will provide.
“I can’t just do one thing forever,” he said with a laugh. “My project has organic synthesis, which I love doing occasionally. I like mold design, which is cool to learn about … Then I use microscopy to understand that physical layer even more, which is another component.
“It’s just so interdisciplinary and I love it so much because I can become knowledgeable in so many different things.”
Neel Patel was crowned UTC’s 2025 Homecoming King.
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