Research Interest

“I think I want to get in to research.”

I have been asked this question a lot. I didn’t realize quite how many people—my students as well as acquaintances—would be interested in trying their hands at research. As a Ph.D. student, I’ve had this conversation quite a few times, so I decided to write down my advice.

Before you start thinking about trying research, you should ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why are you interested in research?

2. What would you like to research?

3. What do you think conducting research is like?

Your answers to these questions should guide the rest of your inquiry into starting in research. I should note—there is one wrong answer to the first question: “I’m interested in research because I want to add a research experience to my résumé”. That is quite a common response, though, so it needs to be addressed.

If that is your answer, I would like to dissuade you, but not to discourage you; research requires an enormous amount of dedication that I don’t think most can sustain on behalf of their résumé—making progress requires a significant internal drive. Further, trying to “help out” with research when you aren’t truly dedicated can hurt the progress of the research you want to help, so it’s important to take stock of that before you proceed.

Dedication

Research is an ancient task which has recently become a full-time occupation. Only a few decades ago, research was the exclusive domain of those whose worldly occupations (or fortunes) provided them leave to commit time to activities with such uncertain rewards. At that time, research required a heroic degree of passion and dedication.

We are fortunate today to have a society of such abundance that many can afford to pursue research as an occupation rather than a hobby. This does not mean that the passion requisite for research has diminished. This fact is reflected in salaries: the pay for research positions in many STEM fields can be surprisingly low—research is the “arts”, or perhaps “entrepreneurship” of the STEM world. That is to say, a successful career in research involves a significant degree of skill and copious luck. That is part of why many researchers are also teachers (i.e. Professors), although abundance allows many to make research a larger part of their duties than before. For most, research is a part-time gig, and the class of people who scrape by is much larger than the number who have truly great careers.

With that said, I don’t want to scare you too much—you might protest that you only want to try research for a summer. You’re right. You just want to do it for a summer. You would need to get through the summer, though. To do research for a single short period requires a great degree of dedication, perhaps even more than to sustain a career in research. That is because research is different from most other pursuits; even the smallest tasks can require deep knowledge of the field. Research requires one to simultaneously learn and practice at the highest levels of a new discipline. Thus, to begin a research career one must quickly catch up both on theory and on practice. To work at the frontier of human knowledge, one must understand the frontier.

The Research Endeavor

If you are reading this, you are probably already pursuing higher education, so I imagine you already have a rough idea of what you’re interested in. With any luck, your interest is related to your major. Unfortunately, it’s not really possible to research “Mathematics”, “Biology”, “Chemistry”, “Philosophy”, or “Computer Science”—research proceeds on much narrower frontiers.

A research topic is typically small enough that it can be stated in a sentence or two. In the past, projects could be larger—sometimes book-length—but today, particularly in academia, people are interested in smaller articles. This is in part a consequence of the fact that some of the metrics which are relevant for a career in research can be increased by the publication of additional articles.

That is a good thing for the aspiring researcher—one only needs to understand the small slice of a discipline they are working in to begin to conduct research. It is also a bad thing—the process of learning in research is very different from the process of learning in a classroom. In a lecture, the material being taught typically has been filtered and processed by thousands or millions of people before it arrived in the lesson notes for a modern course. Those notes were written with the goal of making it as easy as possible for you to understand the material within the short time that you have in a class. Working on the frontier is entirely different—the number of people who are even aware of the recently resolved issues might be in the double or triple digits, and the number of those working on it is probably smaller. You can, and likely will, fit into a conference room or lecture hall with every person on earth who is working on it. When you present, it is possible that nobody else has even thought of your particular subject—you’ll be introducing something new to everyone in that room.

That might excite you, and it might scare you. It should probably do both. The point, though, is that research is probably going to be quite alien to you. Whatever your field is, you need to think about what it would mean to figure out the answer to the kind of question you’re interested in. To illustrate, let me tell you about my first experience with research.

Entering Research

In order to enter research, you almost certainly need some help. The academy has organized a number of programs for inducting new people: formal programs for undergraduates, theses, doctoral programs, and postdoctoral research positions are some examples. All of these are essentially forms of apprenticeship. If you’re looking at starting up in research, you’ll probably be asking someone to apprentice under them, though not in exactly those terms. This section discusses the way that I recommend you enter into a discussion like that.

Mentoring, for the mentor

Many people who look to participate in research as undergraduates think that they are offering a good deal to the person that they approach about joining in research: “I’ll work for you for free!”. That sounds alluring from the outside, but for a mentor it can be a bit of a headache—new researchers often don’t know what they don’t know, and don’t appreciate just how much one needs to know to complete basic research tasks. In some projects, there are tasks which could be completed by any undergraduate, but those tasks usually are not the sort that a volunteer benefits very much from, and in many projects they do not exist at all.

As a result, agreeing to mentor a student involves committing to a complex mix of activities: teaching the mentee about the field, training them on modern tools, and reviewing the mentee’s work. It can take a significant amount of teaching and supervision before that begins to pay off in terms of increased research output, so it’s not as easy to accept a student as prospective researchers sometimes imagine.

The Inquiry

You need to figure out two things before you approach a potential research advisor:

1. Who to approach, and

2. What to say.

Lots of students focus on the first question, seeking to associate themselves with an advisor who is prominent, local, and interesting, and spend less time thinking about the second question. It will be helpful to answer the questions in order, but you should spend much more time on the second than on the first.

How to Find an Advisor

When you’re trying to get in to research, the first thing you should know is that you don’t know what to do—you might have a particular field or subfield that you know you’re interested in, but you almost certainly don’t know what question to pursue—asking a well-stated question is a skill in and of itself. To help you to bridge that gap, and to help you catch up to the frontier of research, you need a mentor. Often those people are called “research advisors”. That person might be a professor, a professional, or a more advanced student. Undergraduates and Master’s students usually work with Ph.D. students or professors.

There are a few things that you need to know about the people you are approaching:

1. They have written a lot about their research, and you can find their writing online.

2. They want you to succeed.

3. They are busy.

and there is one thing you should keep in mind whenever you make a cold call:

1. Everyone has their own interests, incentives, and motives.

Because they are interested in your success, potential advisors will generally be willing and interested in meeting with you if they have time. If they don’t, they will often suggest someone else who might be better able to accommodate you—frequently, one of their students.

How to Win Over an Advisor

If you aren’t sure what you’d like to work on, being redirected shouldn’t be much of an issue—but if you are set on a particular topic, it could be disheartening. To get the interest and attention of a particular advisor, you will need a more strategic approach. One common tactic is to read some of their recent research and ask them questions about it. That’s a great idea, but it often falls flat; people often work in a few related but not identical fields, and it can be very difficult to understand what a paper is really about if you’re not already involved in research. Remember that the person you’re asking questions knows everything about the paper you’re asking about—they wrote it. They can tell if you haven’t made an effort to understand it, and would prefer well-stated basic questions to confused questions about more peculiar points.

How to Read a Paper

It will be difficult, but when you find an advisor that you’re really interested in (and you should be really interested before you reach out to someone), you should make a serious effort to read some of their work before you reach out. This serves two purposes: first, it gives you a sense of what it takes to do the research that they do, and second, it will help you prove that you know enough to be interested in their topic—and thus that you really are interested.

You will probably be able to find a list of their recent works on their personal or laboratory website—and you can supplement those lists with a quick search on Google Scholar or a similar search engine.

Review a few titles and pull out two or three papers to read. My advice is to read the abstract, then the conclusion, then the introduction, before trying to read the paper from front to back—most of the time, the fastest way to read a paper will be to move back and forth between pages, but this is a skill you will develop in time. For now, focus on the sections that give a broad sense of the work before trying to delve into the specifics. Sometimes, it is easier to reconstruct what a paper involves from the conclusions than to read the method or experimental sections directly.

I recommend that you do this for at least a few people before you settle on a potential advisor to contact. This will give you a better sense of what research is like in your chosen field in general, in addition to some more experience trying to read papers. You should also know: most of the work involved in writing a paper isn’t even described in the paper itself—papers are a bit of a fiction, presenting the conclusion of a body of research work in an unrealistically linear fashion.

How to Approach an Advisor

When you contact a potential advisor, you should do so formally—figure out the correct title for them and use it (for Professors, it is Professor. For Ph.D. Students, it is Mr./Ms./Mrs. For non-Professor bearers of doctorates, it is Doctor.). It will either be a crucial piece of etiquette or a pleasant anachronism, so don’t feel awkward about it. Bear in mind as you write that you are asking them to start down the road of a serious working relationship and do your best to start off on the right foot.

Keep the initial email precise and small. Make it easy for them to identify what you want and to respond in the affirmative. If you have questions from reading their work, you can ask one or two short ones here, but you should ask if they can answer you in the meeting—doing so will make it easier for them to respond to your message. Focus on work that you know (or are pretty sure) that they are currently doing. Often, their current projects haven’t quite hit the Internet, so it’s worth asking if they are working on projects similar to those you’ve read about.

The email is going to involve making a big request of them—there is no way around that—but you should do your best to explain why they would benefit from meeting with you. Lead with “I found your research online and I am really interested—could you meet with me to discuss the possibility of volunteering in your laboratory for the next year?”, not “I really want to get in to research so I went online to look at the professors here and your research seemed cool!”.

In brief, explain and show through the context of your email that it is in their interest to consider your offer. Be respectful of their time and make it easy for them to say “Yes”. Don’t over-sell yourself, but make it clear that you want to start a relationship that will benefit you both. You want to get across roughly the following argument:

1. You know a lot now,

2. so you will be easy to train,

3. and you will work with them long and hard enough,

4. so it will be worthwhile for them to invest in you.

And remember: you are asking them to invest in you. Be humble.

P.S.: If you’re interested in working directly with me, I have prepared an interest form with some additional questions. Feel free to email me as well, but please fill in the form.