<p>How hard is it to get a research opportunity at Duke? Is it pretty easy for undergraduates to get in contact with a professor with a lab? Also, can you get paid for doing research?</p>
<p><strong><em>bump</em></strong></p>
<p>Getting research opportunity at Duke = easy</p>
<p>Contacting profs = easy, just email or drop by their office</p>
<p>Getting paid = don’t bet on it unless it’s a summer program like HHMI or something formalized like Pratt fellows (summer only). If you get a paid job, most likely it will be doing grunt work like washing beakers, making buffers, data entry, etc.</p>
<p>I’ve worked in a lab at Duke since summer 09 (paid HHMI fellowship) but most people who do research in labs get course credit. Getting paid = usually only available for people who qualify for work-study, and that is, like the other poster said, usually reserved for taking care of flies or zebrafish or washing glassware.</p>
<p>But it’s REALLY easy to do research at Duke; the university greatly emphasizes undergraduate research so if you don’t get a summer fellowship, you pretty much just email some profs whose research interests you. Or take a class with one of them!</p>
<p>Thanks for the info! Is it manageable to do research during a semester when you have other classes (I’m an engineering student btw)?</p>
<p>Yes it’s manageable, you should be able to be in lab at least 10hrs/wk if not more.</p>
<p>For the first year of engineering, the class schedule is jam packed and I don’t know if you can swing 10 hours/wk (which is pretty much the minimum “normal” schedule - though PI’s/post-docs should be willing to give you some slack around midterm week). I know engineering gets better, and I have engineering friends who do research, but it’s not <em>as</em> common just because they’re in class/lab a lot. But, you can definitely make it work :)</p>
<p>You can definitely swing 10 hours a week if you work weekends…which is pretty much what doing research is about anyway. 2AM time points anyone? ;P</p>
<p>As for research in upper years in engineering, many people do a Pratt fellowship which lets you underload your last 3 semesters so you can do a continuous research project and get 1 independent study credit for each semester. And it is very common.</p>
<p>Is it easy to do research with doctors at the medical center?</p>
<p>Yes, as long as they run a lab.</p>