How to get into research
It's the summer before college starts, and across the country, graduated high school seniors are both anxiously and excitedly awaiting a fresh start at university. While I might end up writing a 'How to survive your first year at college', I wanted to gear this one more towards helping people who want to explore doing research in their first year.
A bit about me: I am currently a rising sophomore doing immunology research at a lab at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. My work focuses on investigating systemic immunosuppression in xenotransplants, developing convolutional neural networks for malignancy classification in prostate cancer, and, my personal favorite, working on antigen engineering for infectious disease vaccines using protein language models.
I have done previous research at Davis, working on building agents for doing single-cell transcriptomics analysis. I had some minimal research experience in high school, but that wasn't in any clear direction, and just reflected my broad interest in AI and neuroscience.
Here's my advice to someone entering college this fall and wanting to make the most of their first year exploring what they might enjoy doing.
1. It's okay to not know what you want to do
Coming into Davis, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do research on. While the breadth of research happening at an R1 university can be overwhelming, it is also very exciting! You are not forced to commit; you can explore and talk to as many labs as possible to get a feel for what they are working on, their culture, and whether you agree with their vision. Don't wait until you have a perfect research focus. My recommendation is to go talk to anyone whose work you find even mildly interesting; you never know what might come out of it. They may also refer you to their colleagues who might be doing work you might be more interested in.
2. Target PhD students or PostDocs, not PIs
I landed my first research position through the annual undergraduate research fair, where this very enthusiastic PhD student was pitching his research to a crowd of ~50 people. I knew there was no way I'd be able to get to talk to him 1-on-1, so I just gave out my email and left. I was then selected via a coding assignment, which few people were able to complete, or cared enough to.
The thing with most PIs is that they are inundated with emails from their prior commitments. The best ones will not have much time to respond to an undergrad with low/minimal research experience. You are better off cold-emailing the PostDocs or PhD students in their lab, asking about openings and the work being done at the lab; they are much more likely to respond and give you a realistic idea of the culture at the lab.
3. Try to learn some skills beforehand
While it will be implicit that you, as a freshman, do not know much, try to learn some basic skills that are common in your field to make a stronger case for them to take you. For computational biology, I'd recommend getting familiar with R, Python, and the basic libraries at the bare minimum, and learning more niche technologies as you end up specializing. But no lab will have the time or bandwidth to teach you these basic skills. Contributing to the lab's open-source software, if they have any, is a great way to stand out and show your skills.
I was one of the only computational undergrads at my Davis lab, yet I was able to contribute significantly with little/no prior biology background (the last time I took it was high school sophomore year lol) because the work being done was inherent to data science and CS, something a lot of biomedical engineers do not have experience with. Sure, there is some biology that is nice to know (why do we filter out cells with a high mitochondrial %?), but you will pick that up on the job. At times, it can feel like drinking from a firehose, but I promise you it gets easier! Before you know it, you'll be able to communicate using the same jargon, and it'll become second nature.
4. Apply to REUs
REUs are a great way to get a structured introduction with a group of peers from the same background to what research looks like. You generally get a stipend + housing, and they look really good for graduate school applications. They are getting more and more competitive each year, and most of them are looking for rising juniors, so I wouldn't bank on them, especially if you aren't an underrepresented minority, but there is no harm in applying. Most REU apps start to open by September, so for an incoming freshman, I recommend trying to keep your GPA as high as possible, trying to get involved in a lab as early as possible (fall semester would be ideal), and start to develop strong relationships with your professors, because most of them ask for 2 letters of recommendation, sometimes 3. I emphasize this again: do not expect them to work out. Me and most of my friends were rejected from REUs our freshman year, but again, shoot your shot! Here's a list that might be outdated but still is a good starting point: REU's
5. Don't limit yourself to just your school
While starting at a lab at your home school is one of the best ways to get some experience of what research looks like, it does not in any way whatsoever have to be the end. For me, I didn't like how there was limited funding for undergrads working on research (state school something something), but there also weren't any labs working on my exact interests, which were applied ML. My statistics professor, who worked on overparametrized models, said he'd be happy to take me, but he needed to find a PhD student first. So what I did was start looking at labs all across the country that seemed to be working on what I was interested in, and sent out cold emails. I found my current research position at Harvard Medical as a result of these connections, so do not give up; it is possible, no matter how impossible it may seem! Most private schools generally have better funding for their labs, and your interests should be your first priority, especially since research is usually an unpaid affair.
6. Your experiences compound
Each of your experiences, no matter how unrelated they seem, will help build on each other. The neuroscience research summer program I did the summer before college helped me somewhat with understanding what research looks like, which led to my Davis position, where my PI's letter of recommendation led me here. Try to think of every position as a learning experience and how it will help you in the future. Try to network and build meaningful relationships with your PIs and PhD students; more often than not, the PhD students and PostDocs are the ones running the show while the PI spends their time writing grants. Thus, your PhD student supervisor or PostDoc is the only one actually writing your letter, while the PI just signs off on it. My advice here is to always try to go the extra mile where others don't to be taken seriously and show them you care about the work being done. They will notice you coming in on a Saturday or volunteering to lead a new contribution, and it pays off.
Lastly, don't stress out too much, and never stay in a lab that makes you feel uncomfortable or toxic. At the same time, find somewhere that pushes you to your limits and challenges you to be better; that is the best way to grow as a researcher.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!