<p>Hi, I am an incoming Fall 2014 freshman, and I intend to pursue the Molecular and Cell Biology, Neurobiology major. I am interested in doing relevant research/internships as soon as possible, and I also checked out the Berkeley internship website (apparently there arent many opportunities for freshmen and sophomores). I was wondering whether anyone here has experience doing neuroscience-related research/internships who could give me some advice? Thanks!</p>
<p>I am a second year MCB Major Cell and Developmental Biology Tract who works in a cancer biology lab at cal.</p>
<p>One thing I can tell you for certain, having attended many research talks of other labs, is that I do not think any MCB professor would let a freshmen do research with them. Even for me getting a position as a sophomore was extremely hard. This is because they want research assistants who have taken a few biology/biochemistry or genomics classes so you can really understand what your doing with your research. Neuroscience is a very, very complex field that deals with so many different neurotransmitter molecules and bio-transduction pathways. You don’t really even start learning neuroscience until you take MCB 160, which would be in your Junior year. Also, professors don’t like first semester freshmen specifically because they have no way to demonstrate what kind of course work load they can handle, since research takes at minimum 10 hours a week, if you really want to get your name on a paper.</p>
<p>This is all honest advice that most of which comes from my principal investigator. You can always send out emails, but I am 90% sure you will be told the same thing im telling you. However, they have quite a few bio-engineering labs that more commonly take freshmen and sophomores, and I believe their are a few labs working on neuro-implant chips for functioning prosthetic arms and legs.</p>
<p>@Jweinst1 Thanks for your reply! I completely understand that it is unlikely for me to really contribute to any research so early on. However, I am quite interested in biotechnology as well, so could you give me some more detailed information on the bio-engineering labs and neuro-implant lab so I can perhaps search it up? As you said, I don’t know if I can handle the course load at Cal yet in my first year, so I will probably just look around and wait until my sophomore year. </p>
<p><a href=“Bioinstrumentation”>http://bioeng.berkeley.edu/research/bioinstrumentation</a></p>
<p>Take a look at these labs, they fit more or less what you were looking for.</p>
<p>I am not saying that you couldn’t contribute to research, it’s just MCB professors are very prestigious in their personality and are very selective of research assistants. </p>