<p>Hi! I started to think about writing a guide to getting research at Berkeley while at my internship today. With the school year beginning in a couple more months, I think now would be a fine time to start thinking about this, or if you're on campus, to start this process.</p>
<p>I'd like to give a disclaimer that these are based on my own experiences and that of my friends in getting research but in no way is this guide a panacea for all your research troubles. As it happens, I am a bioengineer and most of my friends are engineering or bio majors so this guide will really be skewed towards people in those fields.</p>
<p>Before your begin looking for a research position, there are a couple of things your should consider: <b> A) Necessity, B) Interest, C) Timing, and D) Location. </b></p>
<p><b> A) Necessity </b></p>
<p>Research is not for everybody both interest-wise and necessity-wise.</p>
<p>However, it may be necessary for you. If you plan on going to graduate school for a doctorate, research experience is very important if not essential, especially since your doctorate is conferred to you upon the completion of some original research you have done on your own for your thesis. Doing research is also a good idea for pre-medical students, because research on diseases is often done by clinicians who administer the treatment. That and medical schools like to see that you've put a little more thought into this whole medical school business than "I want to save lives and be a hero (not to mention earn bucketloads of money while doing so)," because there can be no further advancements in medicine if physicians did not also participate in research. While research is a definite plus, I am just going to say that it does not guarantee you admission into grad school or med school, and there is still a chance that you can get into either without doing any research, just like how Harry Truman became President without ever having gone to college.</p>
<p>Then, there are some of us with majors that require some form of research one way or other. My own major, bioengineering, is such an example; bioengineers are required to do at least one semester of research or do a senior research project (or something like this). You may want to check if your own major has such requirements.</p>
<p><b> B) Interest </b></p>
<p>There are two aspects of "interest" that I'd like to address. </p>
<p>First off, if research is not necessary for your major or career aspirations, you may just want to do research for fun or because you want to put what you've been about in class into use or because you want to learn more about something. This is a great idea in my humble opinion, because you're at one of the best research universities in the world so why not experience first hand what our univerisity does best. Who knows, maybe one day that experience will inspire you to invent something awesome, create new lab protocols, or start a company selling lab equipment. Also, it's worth noting that industry also makes siginificant contributions to research through their R&D departments so you may one day end up applying for an R&D position and having research on your resume will probably be helpful. In the early '90s, one of the leading physics research labs in the world, Bell Labs, belonged to the private sector.</p>
<p>Secondly, research can be a useful tool to determine your interests and possible future careers. Research can be a good way to determine if you want to go to grad school since you will probably spend almost all your time doing research in a lab in grad school (I've met some grad students who work in the lab everyday from 8 AM to 8 PM). If you don't think you can stand going to lab everyday to make sure you E. coli or mice cells are still alive and take care of them, then maybe doing research (and probably grad school) is for you. Or maybe after doing research, you find the experiments you do to be boring, then you know that your interests do not lie in this field. One of my chem GSIs once told me that he was planning to become a patent lawyer after he got his chem PhD because when he was a undergraduate biochemistry major he found that doing bio-related research was really boring for him.</p>
<p><b> C) Timing </b> </p>
<p>Once you've determined whether or not you're doing research and why, you need to figure out when. This varies for everyone with some people starting as early as high school and others much later. I always felt that sophomore year was the best time myself since you get an opportunity to settle down, explore college, and learn some basics. Getting a research position is almost analogous to marriage; it's a lot of commitment (at least for bio and chem people). </p>
<p>Once you get a research position (and depending on your position or lab), you will find your free time significantly reduced. However, I'd like to add that the "depending on your position or lab" part is fairly important. For example, last semester both my roommate and I had bioengineering lab positions. She did research on ultrasounds and total optical reflection, and I did research on biofuel synthesis using E. coli. She did between 6 - 9 hours of research per week, typically around 6, whereas I did between 9 - 15 hours of research per week, typically around 12. Even though I spent more than 2x the time my roommate did in lab, I was still not putting enough time into my lab; according to one professor I spoke to about research, if I was really serious about it, I'd have to put 15 - 20 hours per week into research.</p>
<p>This bring up my next point: if you want to do research, you should arrange your schedule so you have large blocks of free time available that are at least upwards of 2 hours. A lot of experiments in chemistry and biology and perhaps physics, require a lot of time, and half that time is probably just sitting around and waiting for a reaction to finish. However, you can't just pop out for an hour or two of class because your experiment might not be able to afford you being gone for that long. My first major mistake when I started doing research was leaving one of my experiments alone for 10 minutes to run another experiment when I only should have left it for 5 minutes.</p>
<p><b> D) Location </b></p>
<p>Now that we've got the what, why, and when covered we should discuss where. Though it may not seem like it, there are a lot of research opportunities in and around Berkeley. Yes, there are a lot of students, but there are even more research opportunities. UC Berkeley just recently received $65 million dollars of federal stimulus money for research not to mention the numerous other research grants and awards that we receive. There are definitely opportunities on campus; you just have to be persistent. If you are having a hard time finding a position you like on campus, you can also look around the area for other opportunities. To list a few other places where undergraduate researchers are welcome:</p>
<ul>
<li>Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (including Potter Street and JBEI)</li>
<li>UCSF</li>
<li>USDA</li>
<li>Oakland Children's Hospital</li>
</ul>
<p>The one thing about off campus research that is important to note is that transportation may make the opportunities more troublesome due to cost or time constraints.</p>
<p>So once youve figured out all of that, you can now began looking for <b> A) faculty whom you want to work with or whose research interests you </b>, <b> B) contacting that faculty member </b>, and <b> C) trying to land that position </b>. </p>
<p><b> A) Finding your Lab </b> </p>
<p>The two main problems when I first began looking for a lab or faculty member was where do I find such opportunities and for which labs should I apply.</p>
<p>There are two routes to finding your future lab/faculty: through school research programs or on your own. By school research programs, I am referring to programs like URAP and SPUR (CNR specific). URAP is definitely a great program to look through and apply for but I wouldnt really pin all my hopes on getting a research position through URAP simply because so many people apply to URAP (this is the easy way to find research) and because the selection of research positions are rather limiting. Also, a lot of positions are intended to be temporary though they can be extended. In any case, whether or not URAP works out for you, it is also a good idea to seek out a research position on your own and in your own terms.</p>
<p>There are two ways to find a research position on your own: through classes youve taken or are taking and online. Getting a research position through your classes is a great way to go, but getting an A in that class is not necessarily enough. To a certain extent, it is more important that you show your genuine interest in the subject by visiting the professor (or sometimes GSI) in office hours frequently to ask questions and get to know him/her. Alternatively, you can seek out professors youve never met or perhaps even heard of before by going online and looking through departmental pages for a list of faculty and their research. </p>
<p>There are two important points to keep in mind when looking for a lab: the faculty and the research. The research that the lab does should be interesting to you, especially if youre going to be in lab a lot. If I didnt enjoy culturing cells and bacteria and altering their genes, there is no way Id work 8 hours a day at my current research internship. Besides that, if you dont demonstrate your interest, enthusiasm, and curiosity for his/her research, why would that faculty member take you on as a lab member. </p>
<p>The faculty that you work for is also very important even if you dont end up working closely with this faculty member, because he/she runs the lab so all the decisions he/she makes eventually trickles their way down to you. Ideally, when you do research, especially for your first time, you want to find a mentor be that in the faculty or post doc or graduate student with whom you work. Faculty who are mentoring are more likely to encourage the post doc/grad students in his/her lab to be mentoring. Thus, its probably a good idea to avoid faculty members whom even the GSIs dislike working for even if you find his/her research incredibly interesting (This again is just my opinion; if you can stomach such a lab environment for extensive amounts of time, then power to you.). </p>
<p>For your very first research position, it is more important to learn the necessary lab techniques of your field of interest than to find the perfect lab with the perfect research topic where youre going to spend the rest of your college career. In Frosts words, way leads on to way just as lab leads on to lab so landing your very first lab position and gaining that research experience and those lab techniques will help you land lab positions that are more fitting for you in the future. Even if your first lab has to do with determining the phylogenetic history of some plant and youd rather be in a lab where you worked with stem cells, youd still be able to learn useful lab techniques from your first plant lab that you can apply to your later stem cell lab. </p>
<p><b> B) Contacting the Faculty </b></p>
<p>For me, this has always been a very confusing step. URAP eliminates this step for you, but if youre looking for a position on your own, this is a very important step in the process. There are really only two ways to contact a faculty member if youre looking for research on your own: by email or in person. Personally, I like to do both if possible; I typically email the professor first introducing myself, then declaring my interest in their research, and finally asking if I could meet them sometime within the week and visit their lab. If I dont receive a reply within a week, I then try to seek out the professor in person in his/her office or lab. </p>
<p>Professors are very busy people so they may often overlook your email if theyre in a hurry or if they simply have too much to do. Thus, sometimes it is more effective to visit them in person during office hours. No matter what you opt to do, it is most important to be polite, respectful, and enthusiastic.</p>
<p>On a side note, a lot of the times you must contact 6 or 7 faculty members before you get any replies. </p>
<p><b> C) Getting the Position </b></p>
<p>There are two main components to getting a research position: your resume and your interview with the faculty. Sometimes a cover letter or statement of interest may be requested i.e. URAP. For your resume, the best things to list are research or job experiences and technical skills that are somewhat relevant to your research position. If this is your first research position, you should list any relevant coursework on subjects that relate to your research. From my experiences and those of my friends, typically after youve contacted a faculty member who replied asking for your resume and transcript and then replies asking you to do an informal interview, youve basically almost secured the lab position. This does not apply for URAP, however, and the typical number of faculty that most people I know contact (not including URAP) before getting a research position is around 8. Thus, dont get discouraged and declare it impossible to get a research position if your initial attempts flop; persistence is the key.</p>
<p>Non-URAP interviews are typically informal, and you can dress casually but respectfully. They serve as a good way for you to learn more about what exactly youll be doing, who youll be working with, and get a feel of whether or not this lab is for you. This is a great chance to talk to people in the lab, learn about their experiences, and figure out whether youll be treated as a member of the research team or a source of free labor. If youre lucky enough to have received multiple lab position offers, you can use this opportunity to evaluate from which lab or mentor you can learn the most and gain the most valuable experiences. There should really be no problems as long you are polite, respectful, enthusiastic, and honest (dont say you know how to do something you dont actually know how to do to try and impress the professor).</p>
<p>URAP interviews are more formal and are more similar to job interviews. It is a good idea to dress neatly and professionally for these interviews. Its also a good idea to prepare for these interviews by going through some questions that the professor might ask you and thinking about answers. Here are some possible questions that you might be asked:</p>
<ul>
<li>Why are you interested about this research topic?</li>
<li>What experiences have you had that can make you a successful research apprentice?</li>
<li>What skills/knowledge can you contribute to this research?</li>
<li>How much have you studied about this research topic?</li>
</ul>
<p>Most interview questions ask basically the same basic question: why should I accept you into my lab? If you can sell yourself well, then this interview should go well. FYI, programming ability, especially in MATLAB and C/C++, are pretty valuable.</p>
<p><b>* From the Facultys Point of View *</b></p>
<p>I feel that it is probably most important point to consider this issue from the facultys point of view, because you and your faculty/PI (Principal Investigator) have share a mutualistic relationship. You benefit from gaining the research/learning experience whereas he/she benefits from having an extra pair of hands help run experiments. However, the thing is you are very often more easily replaced in this relationship than he/she may be. Thus, it is very important to understand what is required of you and how this relationship works. URAP likes to call getting a research position an apprenticeship, which is an apt description. Personally, I like to think of the faculty/undergrad researcher relationship as one between an investor and an investment. Think of yourself as a stock, or more accurately, a futures bond that the faculty member must first invest in before he/she can expect returns. Even if you have research experience, experimental protocols and equipment vary from lab to lab so you must undergo some training whenever you start in a lab. After he/she invests his/her time, money, and lab equipment in you for the first couple of weeks, he/she expects a return on his/her investment, especially if its your first lab position. Thus, you should address the facultys concern that you wont bale on him/her as soon as you learn something useful from him/her so you can get a position you find more fitting immediately. I believe the legal term for not returning on an investment is fraud.</p>