<p>I always see people posting about "oh i did microchemicalbiologicalengineering research last summer" etc.. but what i dont get is what exactly does this mean? Is it just students cleaning lab equipment after the professors do the real work? I know people in high school who do "research". wth? how is that possible? i seriously doubt a high school junior can do complex microbiology research (i know people who claim to do have done this).</p>
<p>what exactly does a regular student do in these research projects?</p>
<p>thoughts/comments?</p>
<p>Depends on the school, major, and who’s heading the research.</p>
<p>For me, I’m working on building a prototype robot contracted by the army. I do everything from taking measurements, to drilling holes to calibrating and mounting sensors, to designing and re-designing it, to installing and customizing software.</p>
<p>I’m the only person working on this project as of now. I approach my supervisor every now and then to get his input and expertise, but for the most part he just…supervises and makes sure everything is going according to plan.</p>
<p>All of the students who work in the lab perform actual tasks, not cleaning lab equipment. Half work on software the other half on hardware.</p>
<p>I’m the first to admit, sometimes it can be extremely intimidating, especially because I’m the only undergrad working there and I’m learning everything on the spot–where as everyone else is a grad student and is far more knowledgeable than I am in their fields.</p>
<p>usually its working as an intern in a lab, doing actual work, not just cleaning up…</p>
<p>usually they wont be doing all the work, but rather assisting with the work, like doing more basic data analysis.</p>
<p>at least, thats what my research was like, and i am authored on one of the research papers.</p>
<p>I know first- and second-year college students who have done biology and chemistry research over the summer. They got instructions for an experiment from the supervising professor, and then spent their summer repeating it over and over again and reporting their results back to the professor.</p>
<p>They were certainly involved in the research process (carrying out an experiment to test a hypothesis), but the hypothesis was not their own and they did not design the experiment themselves. They did not do any original work in that sense, but they definitely gained some valuable lab experience!</p>
<p>It probably depends on the context the word is used. On the graduate level, it usually means authoring a paper. At lower levels, people typically mean they participated in the data collection.</p>