If you are interested in doing research at the undergraduate level, read on! I had many pitfalls to write this guide for you.

My experience with different labs

Disclaimer: I have nothing bad to say about the following professors (except Van Tessel perhaps). My experience /time spent in each lab doesn’t even qualify me to judge in most cases. I left because incompatibility and my own problems – see reflections later on. This is just to situate you in my path.

  1. Malhorta lab (radiology) I worked very briefly in the Malhorta lab at Yale New Haven Hospital (Radiology department), introduced by an upperclass student that I know. My direct mentor was a resident (bad sign), and the research very clinical and mathy. Nobody has time to mentor me, and I did primarily data collection. Left after 1 year.

  2. Van Tessel lab (chemical engineering) Here I saw the worst facets of a Yale professor. Paul Van Tessel is tenured, with no research funding, no grad student or staff, and an abanonded lab. I didn’t know this when I emailed him and agreed to work for him. The first time I visited, there was a golden retriver tethered to the bench. Other professors and postdocs apparently used his lab as a storage room. Left after a semester.

  3. Kyriakides lab (biomedical engineering) Awesome professor, great people. I worked under a postdoc, who tauhgt me something. Prof. Kyriakides was incredibly accessible and hands-on. We did experiments together and analyzed histology slides together. Didn’t get any meaningful results. Left in the end due to my gap year.

  4. Lerman lab (nephrology, Mayo Clinic) Worked there for a summer, great people and great lab, mentored by the great Dr.Kai Jiang. Published a paper.

  5. Wagner lab (EEB, yale) I was referred to his lab by EEB DUS Prof. Stearns, and with him I took a class and completed my senior thesis. I was mentored by the PI himself, who is so kind and intelligent. I loved my project on the evolution of menstruation, loved it.

How labs work in the U.S.

As a high school student coming into college, especially a college like Yale with a plethora of labs and professors, you will be awed, confused, and ovewhelmed. It’s important to get an idea of how labs operate in the U.S., which will help you in finding the appropriate starting place and ensure a good experience. Here, I speak from my personal experience and understanding, mostly in the field of biology. Other fields likely work very differently (for example, econ or math).

Each lab has a PI, principle investigator, who is the boss. The PI overlooks the operation and secures funding, which is argubly his or her most important task. Inside the lab, there are various posts similar to those of a food chain (not really): research scientists, post-docs, graduate students, lab technicians and managers, rotating students, undergraduates, and sometimes in the summer, high school students. A lab can be big as 50-80 people, or small of 2-3 people. Not all labs have all the positions, and the same position doesn’t necessarily mean the same job.

Several different kinds of PIs, starting from the top:

  1. Emirtus professors / Fully tenured professors/ Professors with chaired titles.
    These are fully tenured professors (tenure means they have this position for life, won’t be fired unless they committed some serious wrongdoings). Sometimes you will see chair titles, such as “William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology”. The chair titles usually means that they receive special fundings from the university, often donated by the namesake.

    These professors often have quite established labs and have been at the university for years. They will often have continued fundings and served in various administrative positions (department chair, undergraduate director etc.)

  2. Associate professors
    These are professors who have worked at the university for 3+ years, can be tenured or not. Sometimes they have chair titles too.

  3. Assitant professors on the tenure track
    Often newly hired professors who just started their own labs. Usually, they worked as a postdoc in another institution for several years, published influential papers meanwhile and got hired. Univerisities will give them an initial funding (Yale usually gives 2 million or so) to start their own lab. They are the youngest in the department, and have to prove themselves in the next five years. At the end of their 5 year period, they will be evaluated by the tenured professors to determine if they can also be tenured or not.

    They are often under considerable stress and work all the time.

  4. Teaching professors
    Professors who don’t do research. For example, the Gibbs professorship at Yale. If there are not special endowment for them, they will be called lecturers.

Other personnels:

  1. Research scientist
    They are full-time researchers, who have done their PhDs but decide not to be a professor. They are very hand-on with experiments and specialize in certain parts of the research (such as computing, histology etc.) They sometimes lead their own projects, but mostly assist others.

  2. Technicians
    People who support research projects, for example, by performing surgery on animals, operating the flow cytometery etc. You will likely talk to them often about how to debug an equipment or how to use another microscope.

  3. Lab Managers / Assistants
    Responsible for many administrative stuff, such as billing, order of equipment and animals etc, scheduling lab meetings etc.

  4. Post-docs
    People who just obtained their PhD from another institution, often doing significant amount of research and trying to publish.

  5. Graduate students / candidates
    Graduate students are normally 1-2 year PhD students, who haven’t passed their candidacy exam. Candidates are people who passed their candidate exam and start to work towards their thesis.

  6. Undegraduates
    You!

  7. High School Students
    Be careful, they mess up the pippets and contaiminate your cell cultures.

What you should be looking for in a lab

  1. Interest in the work
    The most important thing. You have to be genuinely interested in the topic, the approach, the impact of the research. Don’t just read the Scientific American report of the PI’s research. Download the mesoteric paper and try to grind it through.

  2. Compatibile skills
    If you know you don’t want to slay mice, or you hate math, don’t join labs that require those. However, sometimes you won’t know until you’ve tried (me with wet lab work). That’s okay, part of the process!

  3. Mentorship
    Ideally, you will be in a lab working directly with a PI, a post doc or a research scientist who will meet you weekly. Yes, weekly meetings are required for any meaningful research. PhD students are not appropriate mentors.

    Labs with good mentorship is hard to find. Sometimes you need to be lucky, but more often you need to earn it yourself. How? I will talk about it below.

  4. Proximity
    This varies person to person, but certainly important to me. One of the lab I worked is was on Amistad street, literally on the other end of Yale campus. On a good day, it takes me 20 minutes to bike down there. On a blizzard day – well, I just don’t go on a blizzard day, even though my cells were screaming for me to check on them.

    Proximity matters, especially if you are an undergraduate trying to squeeze time for the lab. Find a lab close to campus, your dorm or your classrooms. These are heuristics that will help you become a better researcher.

  5. Reputation
    At the undergraduate level, the reputation of your PI doesn’t really matter. The project you worked on and how much you learned is more important. However, to help you understand a bit, here are some common awards:

    HHMI= Howard Hughes Medical Institue, very prestigious 7-year position with 8 million funding for professors.
    MacArthur Fellows = Fellowship for professors who have achieved a lot under 40
    National Academy of Arts and Sciences= Selected for their significant contribution in the field, prestigious

    If you can find PI with these titles, great! But don’t bother to hunt them down. They often operate big labs and have no time for little shrimp like you either.

Common ways of finding a lab

  1. Through a class
    This is how I was referred to do my senior thesis with Prof. Wagner, through a previous class with Prof. Stearns (see reflection #1)

    Sometimes professors talk about their research in their class, and even ask for undergrads who are interested to work for them. Do well in those class, talk to them briefly after class, get an idea of their approach with undergrads.

    If you are referred, take the opportunity, because that means you are “recommended”. The Prof. seeking referral often has some non-trivial project that they hope to get someone trustworthy to work on.

  2. Through a friend
    If you heard about something cool over dinner, ask them on! What’s better than discussing fun science with friends and working on experiments together? You can also walk to the lab together in a blizzard.

    This is by no means a necessity though. You will soon find, that research, no matter how collaborative, is solitary by nature. Just a way to get in, not a way to success

  3. Cold emailing
    The most common approach, though not the best. There are several parts you should include in your email: 1. brief introduction, mention previous experiences if you have some 2. your interests 3. time commitment and why you want to do research (med school? grad school?) 4. ask if you can visit and talk to the grad students / talk to the PI in person

    Now some PI will have specific policy regarding undergrads (e.g. Saltzman lab), others will reply on a personal base. I’d recommend contacting at least three labs and visiting the lab itself before committing. This way you will avoid the situation I encountered with Van Tessel lab (abanonded lab with 0 funding) or realize that animal work/ computer clusters are not for you.

  4. Established Programs
    Applying for and attending a research program is a wonderful way of being introduced and involved. Here are some ones that I know: SURF at Mayo, Yale’s STARS, more prestigious ones at Rockefeller, Albert Eienstein SURF…Many universities also have fellowships also support their own undergrads to do research on campus or elsewhere. Most of these open their application in Janurary or Feburary.

If you can, I’d recommend staying on campus during the summer and continue the work you did during the semester. Continuity and quality time are the keys for research. It takes a good two month to learn the lab jargons and you rarely achieve publishable results during summer alone. However, if you started research since Freshman year and are now in your junior year or gap year before grad school, it’s not a bad idea to work in another lab and learn some new techniques.

How to do well?

  1. don’t be afraid to ask
    You all know this. But sometimes when you ask a grad student or postdoc for help, with the location of a material or the microscope, they might look annoyed and not willing to help you. This is not your problem (especially if you just begin). They might just be under a good amount of stress or they just don’t know you yet. Ask gently and see if you can find something out. Always ask. Better be annoying than wasting your time (and PI’s time and money). Ask for feedbacks on how you are doing too.

  2. prioritize it
    I think Yalies engage in too many things. If you are an undergrad and want to do some serious research, it has to be your priority. If you just want something to put on your application for medical school, well, that’s a different case.

  3. work hard
    I remember staying till 3A.M. to take images of my histology slides, so that I can begin the data analysis process earlier. Nobody always does that, but sometimes you need to be late at a party or get up two hours earlier to make it happen. You know, the usual stuff.

Personality and compatibility

Funny I have written so much about research, to say in the end that fundamental science research is not for me. I’ve learned this through repeated trying but I stil don’t find the work rewarding. I’ve achieved some results, and all the professors whom I’ve worked with are happy with my work.

The reason lies in my personality. I am an adrenaline junkie, and I search and seek for stimulations and excitements. I am also the most impatient person I know, so I long for short feedback loop and quick, incremental changes. This is the opposite of what a researcher needs – patience, long-term planning, steady emotions. I also realized that I am not okay with just finding out some secrets about life. I also want to make things and do things with it, and most research result in the form of publications (some biology research are essentially engineering, such as CAR-T therapies, drug delivery etc. so what I am saying is not conclusive)

Tools to use

  1. Check professors' funding:
    NIH reporter: https://reporter.nih.gov/
    NSF reporter: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearch.jsp
    John Templeton Foundation: https://www.templeton.org/funding-areas
    Also from the acknowledgements of their papers. Their grant applications give you an overview of what they are working on (often not said in enough detail on their lab websites) and an idea of whether the professor is willing to support you. These above links only concern biomedical sciences.

Let me know if I said something horribly wrong or if you have any questions. Good luck and have fun!