<p>Hey guys. I've gotten a few questions about the research work I do, how to get involved with research, etc., and I thought that I'd make a general purpose guide to kind of help those of you who are wondering what is actually meant by "research" and how you can get involved in it. Fair warning, I'm typing this at midnight-ish my time, so I'm a bit tired; as such, I'd appreciate it if you could just ignore any typos/grammatical inconsistencies. </p>
<p>Section 1: What is research?
When most high school students talk about research, they're generally talking about looking something up; for example, if I were researching Linus Pauling, I'd look up facts about his life, his work, etc. When the high schoolers on CC talk about research, the term takes on a completely different meaning. Research, or more specifically laboratory research, is pursuing the study of a scientific topic and trying to determine/prove something that hasn't already been explored or proven. It is not, contrary to popular belief, simply "Googling" things; the kind of research this thread addresses is going to a lab and working on a scientific or mathematical project. To distinguish the two types of "research," let's consider this: you're a person (high schooler, college student, whatever) who wants to test the effects of, say, compound A on the expression of a gene in cell type A. After some Googling, you find out that no one has explored this idea in depth, so you don't know what will happen if you expose cell type A to compound A; if you take this idea to a professor and convince him/her to let you work under him/her, you are doing a research project. This is starkly different from our Linus Pauling example outlined above. This is actual scientific research, the kind you'd see in news headlines (although, our cell example probably won't end up on the news :D)</p>
<p>Section 2: How can I begin doing research work?
Well, firstly, figure out which field interests you. Do you like computer science? Biology? Chemistry? Once you figure out your area of interest, you can begin contacting professors. If you live near a university, then just Google "(field name) professors (university name)" and you should be able to find a list of the professors who work/teach in that specific field at the university. Once you've found a list of professors who work in your area of interest, think about your goals with research. What do you want to accomplish? Is your goal to enter and maybe win one of the big science fairs (ISEF, ISTS, Google, etc.)? Do you want to publish your work? Do you want to just observe and learn? Generally, high schoolers who want to do research fall into either the "I want to help my professor on his/her project and just learn" (category A) or the "I want to learn, but I also want to do my own project and enter it into science fairs/publish" (category B). </p>
<p>IF Category A:
Simply email one of the professors in the area you're interested in and be sincere; tell him/her that you just care about learning and would value the research experience. Do some amount of background reading so you at least know what you're talking about. I will have a category A template email below.</p>
<p>IF Category B:
You'll have to be a bit more thorough in your email. If you want to spearhead your own project, you will need to have an idea of what you're talking about before venturing into contact with the professor. You will obviously need to know what it is you want to research. Furthermore, you will need to narrow your professor search down quite a bit. Let's say that you want to do research in computer science. While category A people would be fine with just choosing any professor in computer science since their intent is to learn a bunch of computer science only, you, a category B person, cannot afford that luxury. You have to have a more specific idea of what you want; do you want to do research in Markov Decision Processes, or do you want to explore using Bayesian networks for novel tasks? If you want to do research in MDPs, have a good initial knowledge of what MDPs are, and find a professor whose research interests involve MDPs or have some kind of overlap with MDPs. A computer science professor won't accept your request to join his lab if you say you want to work with a new cancer drug, for example, so having overlap/relevance with/to his lab's goals is basically a must. If you're in category B, I'll assume you're pretty serious about research, so having a research proposal at least partially done before venturing into it would be a very good idea. Basically, if we use our MDP example again, say you want to create a novel search tool (like CTRL+F) using MDPs. You could go about addressing this in several ways.
1. You could email the professor and say that you are interested in building a novel search tool with MDPs, and he
can guide you further and give you access to papers.
2. You can look up ideas yourself and read relevant papers until you have a good idea of how you want to do your
project and THEN email the professor.</p>
<p>Either way, the professor will probably want a research proposal from you before he actually starts letting you work on your own project; by reading a proposal, a professor will be able to see if you are at least conversational in the topic that you want to pursue. If you pursue option 2, you will look a little more impressive to the professor, but option 1 is still very viable. You will need a lot of background knowledge in your topic if you want to work on an independent project in it (when I say independent, I don't mean by yourself; I mean under a professor, but your own project). A category B email template will be included in a separate post due to the character limit on posts.</p>
<p>Section 3: How do I gain background knowledge?
Depends on the field, to be completely honest. If you want to work in something like biomedical engineering, reading papers and deciphering the jargon is the best way to go about it. If you want to work in computer science, reading papers is still the best way, but you will have to have programming knowledge and, depending on where you're going, very good mathematical foundations. Don't expect to start an independent project in comp sci without having a very good handle on programming in a particular language or languages first. If you're going into the more "comp sci" part of things (the theory, artificial intelligence, etc.), you'll need a very good mathematical base. For subjects that are not comp sci or mathematics, though, you don't need much specialized pre-knowledge; just read papers and decipher the jargon until you become conversational in the general area of your topic. After you've hit that point, read papers more relevant to what you specifically want to do and sink your teeth into those. A good example would be if you wanted to study the effects of G-proteins on the activity of cAMP, you should first have a good understanding of signal transduction pathways in general, which you get by reading papers. Once you get a good understanding, read papers on the mechanisms through which the G-proteins work, the molecular structure of cAMP, etc. </p>
<p>Category A email template (assume the professor's name is John Doe, and he is a bio sciences professor at Podunk State. He works with G-proteins and cAMP). You should add/delete whatever you feel like, but this is a general idea of what it should look like:</p>
<p>Dr. Doe:</p>
<p>Good evening. My name is TRG, and I am writing to inquire about a research position in your lab. I am currently a high school student, but I would very much like to gain some research experience in biological sciences; your field, in particular, fascinates me. I would appreciate it if I could work under you in your laboratory so that I may learn as much as possible about your field. I believe that the hands-on experience would be invaluable.
Regards,
TRG</p>