Researcher of the Month - 2005-2025

First of all, don't be afraid. Don't make the same mistake that many people make by thinking that the labs aren't going to want you just because you don't know enough. The whole process of research is actually about learning, and about getting acquainted with a field of knowledge that interests you. So don't be afraid to reach out to labs and professors; they’re a lot less scary than we think they are. Also, do something that you're interested in, because your enthusiasm and interest in something will get you very far. It'll make the experience a lot less tedious if you're doing something that you're genuinely interested in. And as a bonus, research also teaches you a lot of things which you don't expect to learn, particularly about time management, and communication. - Lyrikah Rodrigues. Majors: Psychology, Biology. Featured February 2023.

 

Follow your curiosity. When something piques your interest, just go with it.  Also, for me, a lot of my work is antagonistic in that, I’ll be reading a poem or some other type of work, and I think: I have a problem with this. I’ve learned to pay attention to that voice, and to follow that line until I can find my own argument and really say something interesting and new. - Ashley Barry. Major: English. Featured September 2017.

Being willing to work with other people and collaborate and communicate is really big. At the REUs I’ve been in, they always tell us every year: “Don’t get stuck on your project. Ask for help! Don’t waste the 10 weeks.” Certainly you also have to be willing to put in the hours and really learn the background of your work and figure out everything about a specific problem before you can solve it. But it’s important too to be willing to ask for help when you need it and to communicate. - Daryl Vulis. Major: Electrical Engineering. Featured December 2012.

Be genuinely interested in what you’re doing. I know people who seem to go into research to get their name on something, get published, and add something to their resume. It’s a shame, because research is so interesting. And they don’t give it a chance to become interesting, or they don’t appreciate the value of what they’re investigating. So whatever you do, make sure it’s worth your time. Be so interested in it that you spontaneously think about it in your spare time… Plus, it’s fun! If you find something that really grabs your attention, then going to lab won’t be a chore or something you dread-- it will be something you really want to do. - Ariel Yang. Major: Biomedical Engineering. Featured October 2013.


The PIs that run these labs are extremely busy so you do need to be patient and persistent. I found myself sending out many emails to inquire about openings for lab positions on campus. But I can assure you that it is worth the time and work.I always had a general eagerness to know about how the world works, what feels like an innate and inextinguishable curiosity, and research is really one of the ways I fulfill that. For someone that has an interest in science or just a curiosity for learning, I really recommend it. You will likely end up meeting some great and influential people, and have some fun along the way. So I would say, go for it! - Vicken Khazar. Majors: Biology. Featured June 2021.

 

Don’t be scared to dive in head first. Send that email to your professor. One of the hardest parts of getting started is: Should I send this email? How do I start? If you know a professor that you’re interested in, just email them, try to contact them, and schedule a meeting. Remember, they’re people. They’re not scary. They want undergrads to work with them. That’s one of the best parts of SB. There are so many opportunities for research here that ... you really just have to ask. - Lee Ann Santore. Major: Biochemistry. Featured January 2019.

The one thing I love about research is that you’re doing something that no one else has ever done. So even If you’re doing small experiments, in terms of the results …they could have huge consequences. Sometimes a two hour experiment can disprove an entire hypothesis or change the way you think about something…. There’s always more to be done. But the amount of work you put in pays off: it makes me feel like you’re being productive even if you’re getting a few small tasks done--that they can all add up to be something meaningful. ...Out of anything, I’d say, research has really taught me how to learn. A lot of times, in classes, it really can be on you to make sure you understand the material at a deeper level than what’s presented in class. Just developing the skills on how to do research – looking up information and learning about something that‘s new to you, that is definitely something that translates to classes, and at a deeper level, just helps you perform better across the board. -Jesse Pace. Major: Biochemistry. Featured: June 2019.

I love it. I really do! I think it’s the investigation. When you research so much about a topic, you start to formulate questions. The gratification of going through with your hypothesis and testing it and actually getting results is the best thing ever. To be honest I also like it when the results you obtain contradict your hypothesis, because then it sparks more questions; you think, "Wait a minute – what else is involved?" I love that too. And my lab has such a great atmosphere. -Melissa Daniel. Major: Biology. Featured: February 2014.

I think it’s important to know that it’s totally okay to make a mistake. People do appreciate that you’re trying to learn when you’re in lab. I’ve never had a mentor who didn’t prioritize that--the fact that I am trying to learn. I’ve never had to work with anyone who was more concerned with having a flawlessly done methodology than their mentee learning how to do things. It’s important to learn not to be afraid to make mistake, to ask for help. In some ways, that is what makes research different from classroom learning because when you make a mistake in the classroom on an exam (especially a final), you’re punished for it. But with research, for the most part, when things go wrong, you can take your mistakes and bounce back and learn from them.  - Claire Garfield. Major: Biology. Featured: November 2018.

 

I love doing research. And I don't know if this is the right way to express it, but I feel like doing research really helps build up your practical sense of what you know and are learning. When you're in class, you know you're learning about many different things, but sometimes you question: am I really capable of contributing to this area? But when you're actually investigating something as opposed to just learning it from a lecture, you get to put into practice what you are learning about. It helps you visualize what you're learning much more. And so you gain a better appreciation of how the researchers approach problems, and what their thought process was: how they got from point A to point B. Doing research helps you understand the link in how they got there much better than if you were just told how they did it in a class. - Joseph Bisculca. Major: Biology. Featured August 2022.

 

Doing research has also been significant in preparing me, and helping me to become more independent. When I first started out in research, I would sit around, waiting for someone to give me something to do. But now I’m able to investigate things and decide what the next step is without having to be told. I’m able to make decisions, such as whether to run a certain characterization technique, for myself. - Alicia Elliott. Major: Engineering Science. FeaturedJanuary 2015.

I've learned a lot of the research skills, just by hands on or by talking to people . . . I'd say that's one of the great things about doing research . . . that instead of learning by book, you learn by doing, and seeing how it really applies in the real world, or at least in the research world. Ted Feldman. Major: Engineering Science. Featured January 2006.

 

I would say that the research I’ve done is probably the most valuable thing as far as preparing me for graduate school because I’ve learned how to work independently and I’ve learned how to problem solve. I’ve learned how to figure out when it’s time to talk to people, and to figure out how to solve your problems. And a big driving force for me is: knowing that I enjoy doing research. I knowthat I have a passion for it. Knowing that makes me feel more confident, more prepared for graduate school. I’m excited to begin. - Erica Palma. Major: Biomedical Engineering. Featured January 2011.

Yes, I didn't think that you would end up doing all these steps and then get a completely different result than what you anticipated…Or do all this work for several months and find that nothing works. Or you do several experiments for a few weeks, and everything works! It's very unpredictable in that sense, and I did not expect that at all when I started doing research. I really expected it to be “step A, step B leads to step C, but that's actually not at all what it is. - Simran Multani. Major: Chemistry. Featured December 2023.

There are always obstacles that you encounter in the lab. Sometimes experiments don't work out great. You might have contamination issues that can take weeks to resolve. Or when I was writing programs, for instance, I was coding a dimensionality reduction method from scratch, I ran into a problem where I wasn’t able to make any progress for what seemed like forever.

And when that happens, that’s usually when I go to my mentors, and I ask for help. But then I get it. And once you overcome those hurdles, you eventually learn not to panic, but to remind yourself that it will work out, that you will be able to get past these obstacles and it will be fine. You know that if you just keep working on it, that it will be resolved, in some way. I think I’ve built up a lot of resilience because of going through these processes. - Gabrielle Vaccaro. Major: Biochemistry. Featured June 2024.

 

Curiosity-that’s definitely important. Also that you don’t get discouraged. A lot of the time, things don’t work. Especially early on, there are days when you run a PCR and you do something and it just doesn’t work. That can be heart breaking but you have to just keep going. Ask anybody who has done research – sometimes you feel like you don’t even know where to start but you just find a way. You talk to people and discuss projects. I’ve had some great support too from the graduate student mentors I’ve worked with. And my parents have been very supportive. - Abigail Hintermeister. Major: Pharmacology. Featured October 2014.

Persistence. And time. Failure is imminent. Not everything you do will work. You’ll hit road bumps. You’ll hit walls. But if you remain persistent and keep an open mind to what could be happening in your experiment, and you put a lot of time in, you learn that the more mistakes you make, the more things don’t work . . . the more experience you gain. That’s partly why undergraduate research is so valuable, because you learn how to make mistakes. You learn how to fix mistakes. Jean-Luc Chaubard. Major: Biochemistry. Featured December 2008.