GEARS in North Carolina
Global Education, Academics, and Research Skills
GEARS is a unique academic, research and cultural exchange program that enables academically gifted domestic and international university students to experience academic research at universities across North Carolina. The program runs in the winter (January – February) and summer (June – August). The GEARS seminar will offer online (open-enrollment) and campus options during the Winter 2025 session. For representatives from our partner university’s who would like to discuss campus GEARS program opportunities for student cohorts, please reach out to the GTI directly or contact the GEARS program coordinator, Chanelle Gobena-McArthur (cmmcarth@ncsu.edu).
Join an upcoming information session for the 2025 Winter GEARS seminar.
- Info Session I: Friday 9/27 at 9:30a US EST (campus and online seminars)
- Info Session II: Thursday 10/17 at 9:30a US EST (campus and online seminars)
- Info Session III: Wednesday 10/30 at 9:30a US EST (online seminar only)
- Info Session IV: Monday 11/18 at 8:30a (online seminar only)
Meeting Room: 851 388 1946 Passcode: 25WGEARS
GEARS Virtual Poster Presentation Winners
This is a competitive academic research seminar that does not involve credit or culminate in a degree. Acceptance into this seminar is not guaranteed and also depends on the capacity and interest of relevant faculty and departments. Students are encouraged to apply early.
The GEARS seminar will:
- Introduce students to university research (planning experiments, accomplishing research tasks, managing time, ethical issues in research, summarizing results, lab safety, using the library and other project-specific resources, etc.).
- Students will not engage in classified research or access research where IP issues are an issue, but we endeavor to pair students with faculty conducting relevant or similar research.
- Provide workshops on academic oral and digital presentation skills and various aspects of U.S. American culture.
- Support students as they determine if they are truly interested in pursuing a graduate research degree program at a North Carolina university or elsewhere in the U.S.
Application Requirements
*Certain partner universities have special conditions and funding opportunities set up for their students. Please contact your university for specific partnership details.
Please contact your school’s international office, sponsoring agency, or email us if you have questions about the program and application process. This is a very competitive program, so you may not be accepted even if you meet the minimum eligibility requirements.
Documents Needed
- CV/Resume in English
- Official University Transcript in English: Minimum GPA of 3.0 on 4.0 scale.
- English Language Test Score in English: applicants need to submit one test
Native English speakers or students enrolled in a university that teaches in English are exempt.- Minimum required scores are:
- TOEFL iBT: 85
- TOEFL iBT Home Edition: 85
- CET 6: 480
- ELTS: 6.5
- TOEIC: 800
- TEM4: 80
- Duolingo: 100
- Minimum required scores are:
- All documentation must be submitted in English
Campus GEARS
Campus GEARS Information
Applications for the 2025 Winter Campus GEARS session are open from September 19 – October 25. Admissions are made on a rolling basis with the first round starting the week of September 30th. Students can select two research topics of interest when applying to GEARS.
Price: USD$3720 (GEARS Campus)
This price includes:
- Lab placement and mentorship by NC State faculty and university fees
- Poster & presentation skills workshop & resources
- Research skills workshops & resources
- Personalized poster feedback on first draft (one-on-one consultations also available)
- Live workshop on tips & procedures for graduate admissions with the graduate school
- U.S. American culture courses and workshops
- Cultural excursions and campus tours of nearby universities
- GTI Certificate of program completion
- A formal evaluation from mentoring professor
Campus Process and Timeline
| Application Opens | September 19 |
| 1st Round Applicant Review & Placement | Week of September 30 |
| Applications Closed and 2nd Round Review & Placement | October 25 |
| Program Offer Made | September 30 – November 1 |
| Program Acceptance Deadline* | 3 days after offer |
| Professor-Student Introductions | Starting January 7 |
Campus Travel and Arrival Information
The closest airport to NC State University is Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU). We recommend all accepted program participants fly into this airport on their program start date.
Please arrive during business hours from 8:30 AM-5:00 PM, if possible; if you cannot find a flight that arrives during this time, let us know your flight information in advance. We will do our best to arrange transportation for whenever you arrive.
Campus Winter Cancellation & Refund Policies
Program Withdrawals and Refund Requests
If you can no longer participate in NC State University in-person programs and choose to withdraw after you have confirmed your acceptance, please email lynn.wang@ncsu.edu with an official withdrawal request along with a brief explanation for the withdrawal.
The following chart lists the schedule for refunds if you have already paid fees:
| Withdrawal Date | Refund |
| 60 Days Before Program Start Date | 50% of total fees paid, -minus $50 USD administration fee |
Program Withdrawals and Refund Requests (Visa Denials)
If you are canceling your registration due to visa rejection, the NC State Global Training Initiative will refund 100% of total fees paid (minus the $50 USD administration fee) provided you email lynn.wang@ncsu.edu within 15 days from the date shown on the letter of rejection, before your program start date.
Your email must include the following:
- An official withdrawal request
- The official letter of visa denial issued by a U.S. Embassy.
We will begin to process refunds once the January-February program ends.
Program Cancellation (Low Enrollment)
GTI will inform the participants if the program does not happen due to low enrollment by November 22, 2024. In this case, the participants can switch to other GTI programs without any change fee. Otherwise, GTI will refund 100% of the program fee to the original payment method (debit/credit card, etc.). The refund may take a few weeks.
GTI cannot refund payments made to other entities (U.S. State Department, airlines, etc.)
Online GEARS
Online GEARS Information
Applications for the 2025 Winter Online GEARS session are open from October 8 – December 2. Admissions are made on a rolling basis with the first round starting on November 5. Students can select two research topics of interest when applying to GEARS.
Price: USD$1520 (GEARS Online)
This price includes:
- Lab placement and mentorship (by NC State & UNC System faculty) and university fees
- Online e-poster & presentation skills workshops
- Research skills workshops & resources
- Personalized poster feedback on first draft (one-on-one consultations also available)
- Live webinar on tips & procedures for graduate admissions
- GTI Certificate of program completion
- A formal evaluation from mentoring professor
Online Process and Timeline
| Application Opens | October 8 |
| 1st Round Applicant Review & Placement | November 5 |
| Applications Closed and 2nd Round Review & Placement | December 2 |
| Program Offer Made | November 5 – December 9 |
| Program Acceptance Deadline* | 3 days after offer |
| Professor-Student Introductions | Starting January 7 |
Program Highlights
Research Publications
GEARS participants and research mentors have had great success in submitting journal articles, conference papers and more to various publications and conferences. Below is a sample of publications and topics that resulted from the research conducted during the GEARS program:
Publications and Conference Papers
- C. Huang, Z. Tay and K. Harfoush. “MASS Communication for Constrained Edge Devices”. Accepted for publication in the 30th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN 2021).
- “Towards a Holistic View of Technology Commercialization” for TEMSCON-EUR 2021
- “On the Relationship between Digitalization and Managerial Competencies” for TEMSCON-EUR 2021
- “Efficacy of Satisfiability-Based Attacks in the Presence of Circuit Reverse-Engineering Errors” 2020 EEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS)
- Cheng, Y., Jiang, H., Xie, C-X. & Wang, Y-D. (In Press). Chatbots and health: Mental health. In Evelyn Ho, Carma Bylund, Julia van Weert, Iccha Basnyat, Nadine Bol, and Marleah Dean. (eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Health Communication. Wiley-Blackwell.
- C.D. Haigh, J.H. Crews, S. Wang, G.D. Buckner, “Multi-Objective Design Optimization of a Shape Memory Alloy Flexural Actuator”, Actuators, 8(13), 1-16, 2019.
- “An Interpretable Machine Learning Model to Classify Coronary Bifurcation Lesions” 2021 43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC).
- X. Neumeyer and M. Liu, “Managerial Competencies and Development in the Digital Age,” in IEEE Engineering Management Review, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 49-55, 1 third quarter,Sept. 2021, doi: 10.1109/EMR.2021.3101950.
- “Measurement-Driven Flow Selection for Open vSwitch Offload” IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2022), Seoul, South Korea, May 2022.
- “Airplane Detection and Classification Based on Mask R-CNN and YOLO with Feature Engineering”
- “Enriching an Online Suicidal Dataset with Active Machine Learning”
- X. Neumeyer, K. Cheng, Y. Chen and K. Swartz, “Blockchain and sustainability: An overview of challenges and main drivers of adoption,” 2021 IEEE International Conference on Technology Management, Operations and Decisions (ICTMOD), 2021, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/ICTMOD52902.2021.9739231.
- Cheng Y, Wang Y, Zhao W, Zhang K, Cai X, Jiang H. Virtually Enhancing Public Engagement During the Pandemic: Measuring the Impact of Virtual Reality Powered Immersive Videos on Corporate Social Responsibility Communication. Social Science Computer Review. July 2022. doi:10.1177/08944393221111482
- Cheng, Y., Bai, Xin-Tong, & Jin, Wei-kai. (2022). Testing contingent relationships between multinational companies and consumers: Analyzing Tesla’s crisis communication in mainland China, the 25th annual International Public Relations Research Conference (IPRRC) Paper Proceedings, March 3-5, Orlando, USA.
- Cui, X., Long, Qi., & Xie Zhifei. (2024). TRECVID MedVidQA Medical Video Question Answering Challenge (2nd place winner) for an NIH Conference
- Lu, T., Pang, H. (2024). A Machine Learning Based Approach for the Identification of Fake Bills in Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Mathematics Journal, vol 25, issue 2, article 1.