<p>Looking at the winners of last year's Siemens competition, I became more and more intrigued. All of them seemed to have done research at a university, or even a medical college. What I don't understand is HOW they do this. HOW does one work with a professor and do graduate-level research that is ground-breaking as a high school student? Does he just e-mail a random professor and say, "hey, I'm interested in your work. let's do research together." Or is there some kind of connections that existed beforehand? If there is, how does someone like me (who has absolutely no connection whatsoever) enter the Siemens Competition?</p>
<p>Last year no one from Nebraska entered the competition. lol</p>
<p>only around 1,600 people enter the competition because of the lack of number of people who actually know about the competition. I’m gonna do some research at a science lab in my county and just might try to enter the competition. Hopefully my teacher who actually helps intel kids can help me out to. You can always talk to your guidence counselor.</p>
<p>btw a good 300+ make semifinalist so theres a decent chance of actually making semifinalist.</p>
<p>Yeah I made semifinalist, but I didn’t do research at any university. I had a mentor at my high school who helped me out.</p>
<p>fianchetto,
Emailing a prof is EXACTLY what my S did. He looked at profs who were doing things he considered interesting, prepared a resume and emailed two of them. It helps that there are a number of colleges in our area. S was able to take a bus after school to meet with his prof. Neither my husband or I are academics or scientists, so S was on his own. He did not work in a lab, but met with the prof regularly, read articles, worked on proofs and eventually came up with an idea. (Math and comp sci projects tend to more theoretical and therefore don’t need a lab.)</p>
<p>S has been interested in some specific areas for a while and had taught himself the undergraduate underpinnings of what he wanted to study. Some of this was via MIT OCW, some of it articles by professors in the field, who he learned about via their blogs. We also bought him a book occasionally if he thought it would be particularly useful.</p>
<p>Some students have parents who are faculty or who work in research and can make introductions. Some students build stuff in their garages. Talk to your teachers or your parents’ friends and see who might have suggestions.</p>
<p>I just e-mailed two professors. I wonder what they would think though. Probably ***??!! Who is this random creepy guy? And put me on the spam list.</p>
<p>Hey,</p>
<p>Fianchetto- Always nice to see a fellow Nebraskan on CC!</p>
<p>I am interested in doing research for Siemens as well. Have you tried emailing professors from Creighton, UNL, and UNO. Actually, I have a cousin studying medicine right now at Creighton, so there’s a possibility that I might meet a professor through him. However, I have heard it is VERY tough to just email a professor and be invited to research with him.
But you should definately try… I am!</p>
<p>Good Luck,
Robbie</p>
<p>YES, just e-mail like crazy! First, you need to come up with your own research area of interest. Then you just need to search university/schools for professors with a common research interest (they all have bios with their own research interests). Remember, it does not need to be a top university–sometimes it’s good to keep local and e-mail community colleges too. Many professors are glad to help; after all, their job is to help students! It can’t hurt. For me, it took ~30 e-mails to find the perfect mentor, but in the end, she is perfect and she has helped me loads! good luck!</p>
<p>btw–I recommend you create a template to send out to the profs. w/ a little bit of information about yourself, why you would like to do the project, what your own ideas are, and what your research experience is</p>
<p>I’m currently working on a project for Intel: all I did was email a professor who specialized in my area of interest, and now I have an awesome mentor! My project is computational, so you don’t have to do “lab” research - it really depends on what you want to do. Really the most important thing is finding a good idea, luckily I found one very fast 
</p>
<p>Oh, and I have an question: since I’m going to already enter Intel would it be possible to enter Siemens as well? If so is there any additional work/adjusting required?</p>
<p>In my high school, there is actually a “science research” course where you learn how to develop hypothesis and research plans and contact mentors. After you’ve narrowed down to a specific research topic, you should read a LOT of journals articles that outline research already done by scientists, and afterwards you can start emailing professors at universities for possible mentorship. You should know your topic area extremely well by the time you start contacting scientists. When you first email them, you may want to simply tell them who you are, what you’re working on or planning to work on, and show your interest in THEIR research. Here’s I was told: Ask for help and possible guidance, develop an email relationship, and THEN ask if they would like to be a mentor. This way, the professor would get to know who you are and how capable you are, and would more likely respond positively to your request. Most of the kids in my class who did this found mentors. </p>
<p>Don’t worry about not working at a university and not doing graduate level work and everything… A friend of mine in my science research class wanted to study gorrilas, so in her sophomore year she found a mentor who lived like in Scotland or something through email. She spent some time during summer observing gorrilas in a zoo, and now she’s competing at the actual ISEF in I think Nevada, won highest honor in regional JSHS and won at state JSHS, and won a lot small awards from the air force etc. And throughout all this she has never met her mentor face-to-face, though they had frequent email exchanges every week.</p>
<p>I’ve never competed in Siemens because I’m not a senior, but I know that for other competitions you DON’T need to do ground-breaking research to gain recognition. It’s not about how famous your mentor is; it’s about how original your idea is and how passionate and knowledgeable you are about subject. Of course, good paper helps too, since Siemens judges by your research paper.</p>
<p>Just out of curiosity, how long is a typical successful research report for the Siemens competition?</p>
<p>I’m not sure exactly, but I think it’s at least 1+ year, but some projects may have been worked on for several years. The time it takes depends on what you’re doing, generally biology takes longer than say physics, but that’s not always true. As how time time are you going to devote to it? All summer?</p>
<p>This is very intriguing to me know…darn the
CC community!!! LOL :)</p>
<p>If I like biomedical engineering and have some ideas for medical devices, would this count as a research topic? I don’t know how much time I have, latter part of this summer is actually best for me because I want to do a long internship and BME camp next summer (as well as start college apps). I would appreciate some help!!! :)</p>
<p>Math research, though the least popular, takes the least amount of time. I’m doing research in theoretical math atm.</p>
<p>What do you mean be “math research”? BTW, tomjinesistheman, your name is beaslty and epic! ;)</p>
<p>As tomjonesistheman said math research probably takes the least amount of time per say, but it’s hard to find something that will have the quality of a Intel or Siemens project, while not being exceedingly difficult.</p>
<p>Oh and to all of you prospective competitors I would suggest you take a look at the competition’s (Intel or Siemens, etc) website. I think they have all the abstracts of last years semi-finalists; and you can also find many entire papers with a quick google search.</p>
<p>How exactly do you recommend choosing a project? I love math and I’m fairly good at it, but I’ve never really thought of some new mathematical concept to investigate…</p>
<p>Okay. I’m interested in this competition. I have some questions.</p>
<p>Besides high school courses, I have no information about anything!
I want to do some research maybe in engineering, but what high school student has experience in that?</p>
<p>My dad works at UCI. But he said he doesn’t know what professor would do research with a high school student? Especially considering they don’t really have any experience?</p>
<p>And how does the Siemens project work? I mean you can’t just jack the reserach work from your mentor?! lol</p>
<p>Also, about how much time do you typically spend with your mentor??</p>
<p>Thanks guys!</p>
<p>^ I’d suggest looking on Siemens’ and Intel’s site - they have past abstracts. Also again ^ most project take 1+ year, but others have been worked on for several years. The best way to learn about the process is to get on Siemens’ and Intel’s site; they have plenty of information. Lastly, much of the rest depends upon what you’re researching - some projects will take longer than others, and some will require more assistance from a mentor.</p>