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Dunno about plant biology, but it sounds like you're working with a grad student. Have to talked to the grad student's advisor / the real PI?
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You want to be in a small lab where the PI is doing things and can teach you, and not have to rely on a graduate student. The graduate students are so busy, that they do a cursory job in teaching you / training you, and then when an experiment doesn't work, they will point a finger at you to save face with their PI. I have been in 4 labs (undergrad, internship, and two jobs after college) and the pattern is there, every-time. Other people may have different experiences, so I can only attest to what I have seen....take home message: look for a lab where you will work alongside the PI for the majority.
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This is pretty on point, although I might add to it if I can.
In my experience, labs can fall under 2 main molds. 1. You can have a BIG paper-pumping lab where there are 15+ people (3 post docs, 5 grad students, a plethora of techs) and where you are pretty sure that you'll get on a paper and the research is super well-funded but you will probably rarely see your PI (maybe at lab meetings and bi-monthly personal sit downs). It's very likely you'll get matched up with a post-doc no matter where you go which can actually be pretty cool. So, if you're looking at this type of lab really focus on meeting the post-docs and other grad students. Do they look really stressed? Are they friendly and supportive? You want to be matched with someone you can get along with 8 hours a day and who is willing enough to finish off one of your experiments or come in with you late at night if you need help. Post-docs are still trying to make their own careers to get into industry or firmly in academia, so it's possible you might find a mix of altruistic and way-not altruistic people.
2. Another type of lab is the small, 1-3 person group where the funding is continually pretty low/being renewed, less publications because less people, but there is a pronounced intimate vibe of "togetherness" and cohesion. This can be nice because you might actually be working closely with the PI, him/herself. It's tricky though, because papers may be limited. However, if the PI is new and you help him/her get off the ground floor, you may be rolling in accomplishments and have the gratitude of a (newly) successful scientist to help you through the med school process. PI LORs look good on med school apps-if you go the big lab route, you can't really get a grad student to write one for you (post-docs are controversial for LORs-there's another thread on here that talks about that).
Welcome to research! It can be a lot of fun-and I've worked in both settings, so I don't necessarily recommend one over the other. My advice would be to a)Make sure you like the kind of research the lab does and b)Make sure you like the people/person you'll be working with. Really you can get into any science idea and enjoy it if you have the right people around you.
Also, it's good to think about your goals. If you've already tried research or really want a publication, maybe shoot for the really productive labs. If the PI is too small and won't have any publishable data ready for you for another 1-2 years, then you might want to re-consider. Pubs look good on med school apps, although I don't think they're necessary by any stretch. Besides publications, it can really enhance your research experience to be studying an idea that has been partially worked through before and that WILL generate good data (you can never know for sure, but it's tough to be the person testing a completely new idea and see all of your experiments fail; better to get a project that has a history and a promising direction).
Good luck! Feel free to PM me with any further questions, I've been on the research scene for awhile,haha.
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Well, I certainly didn't mean to make it seem like there is an objective ONE OR THE OTHER situation in regards to the close with PI vs publication. A lot of labs will be somewhere in the middle, I was just setting up 2 extremes (and this is all based on my experience, too: 2 labs I worked with literally just me and the PI, and another lab I had a huge staff...yeah-I get around hahah).
Look up some of the PIs you're interested on Pubmed, or look at their websites. You will be able to tell the relative "productivity" level of the lab. Keep in mind that different PIs have different strategies-some like to "fragment" larger papers in favor of publishing in 2-3 less impact factor journals. Others might have fewer overall publications, but they might be in really impressive places because they take time to accumulate an entire story before publishing. Different strokes for different folks...
In my personal opinion, you want to have someone A) who knows you really well (ideally someone who you have known for more than 2-3 months..) and B) who has a professional degree (you want to put down PhD or MD in the AMCAS category). Besides that, I really don't think adcoms pay attention to the "identity" of the writer, so there is probably little distinction between a postdoc and a PI. It's far more important that the letter says something about your character, peppered in with true anecdotes about your experiences together to back up his/her conclusions that you are passionate, committed, etc.
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They're not mutually exclusive. Not at all. In fact, I'd say your chances of being published are BETTER when you're in a lab with close contact with the PI. It means the PI is working with you, which means they're invested in your project, which means you've got a decent chance of getting published provided you get good enough results.
I would advise you to avoid big labs. There's little PI interaction and often the jobs you'll get stuck with are menial tasks (like washing dishes or autoclaving) or you'll get an unimportant role in a project that will, at best, land you as a middle author on a paper. Also try to avoid labs with unforgiving, type-A PIs; they tend to have little patience for the kinds of mistakes undergrads are sure to make and expect the same quality of work out of you that they'd get out of a grad student. I've seen undergrads work in these types of labs before, and it never ends well. For example, one guy I know got fired from the lab he had been working in for three years after a mix-up with the HR department (they were supposed to send him papers to fill out to be hired on as a part-time employee, he never got them, his lab assumed he was being lazy and rescinded his offer of employment...he won't be getting a LOR from them as you can imagine).
Anyway, when you meet a professor to talk about joining a lab, just ask them:
- What's the work environment like here? (if they start bragging about how hardcore their lab is and how they demand perfection...RUN)
- If I worked in your lab what would you expect me to do? (again, look out for anything that shows unrealistic demands, but also beware of anything that suggests you'll be a PCR monkey or a glorified dishwasher)
- How much interaction will I have with you in my project? (if they say you'll be working under a grad student, find a different lab)
- What are the chances of me getting a publication? (don't ask this if you only have a year to give; the foregone conclusion is usually that with only a year you won't get anything significant done)
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Switch labs.... and make sure you are going to get published.
I would look for a PI that is new to the university as someone else mentioned. Tons of perks. I was very lucky in that my PI straight up told me that one of his goals was to get me published. I don't see anything wrong in asking the PI if undergraduates get published regularly.
Btw does anyone see any merit in OP looking through the faculty and picking out professors who taught medicine/got their md at a top 20 medical school (if OP was to look in a different department)? I would imagine that you would get some nice LORs, possible with a link to someone on the adcom.
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My PI in college said this. She was new to the university. She was also useless. I think rocks serve more use than her, because you can do stonemasonry with rocks. Could you do stone masonry with my PI? No, but quite frankly, you couldn't do anything with her....because she was useless. Anyway, point is, she said her goal was to get me published. I wrote, what I consider, my best piece of scholarly writing, on epithelial-mesenchymal transition.....a wonderful abstract. She sat on it. Did nothing with it. Gave me a B for research. I was like "yo I'm out, have fun with you're 38% fertilization failure rate since you buy eggs from YOUR NEIGHBORS FARM."
I digress, however.
Exactly what I was told; never happened. PI's will sugar coat **** in order to secure the labor to do daunting **** in the lab, so usually when they say "oh yeah you'll have a publication if you work here" take that with a masssive grain of kosher salt.
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One of the dangers of a brand new PI is that it takes a year or more to start a completely new lab, establish and optimize procedures for experiments (which can be tedious; identifying the BEST timepoints for incubation/concentrations, etc), and find out which of his/her ideas are going to sink or swim by trying many at once. The short staff is nice because you get to be closer, and anything the lab publishes will likely have your name on it. But in my experience, the first year or so a PI gets there, very little gets done with publications.
Getting your name on a paper as an UG, or even post-UG as a full-time lab tech is as much about luck and timing as anything else (many on SDN have said this same thing). IMO, if you walk in on a more established lab which already has protocols optimized and ideas refined, with more projects going and full schedules for publishing data in effect, you stand a better chance at getting in at the right point.
But like many above have said, research isn't all about publication. It's great to have a supportive and caring faculty to work with, and the LOR will be a great asset as well as your mentor's future career advice. It very well may determine which medical schools you apply to, as your impression of research is created by the environment where you start actually practicing it. Don't stress too much about selecting the "perfect lab." Keep your ear to the ground and make sure there aren't a bunch of horror stories associated with a certain group, and check out the lab website to see if you find the research interesting. Other than that, I wouldn't worry too much about the "publication schedule" because it's very challenging to predict.
For the record, I've had several past PIs tell me on the first day they will get my name on a paper; several projects followed through, several didn't. You can't predict these things well unless they are literally writing the manuscript as they interview you.
In terms of your "own project," this is most likely something that is a side project set aside for rotational lab techs that is incomplete, or a side idea of the PI that the grad students/post-docs aren't working on. Maybe it will be an existing project that needed some extra hands on deck. I wrote a grant proposal for my own research idea, and got NIH funding, but this is rare when you are young (I had a lot of help with it, so not trying to toot my own horn). Your influence will be felt by what you do with the project-a good mentor will guide you, but will let you introduce your own ideas and will encourage you to read literature and invest yourself in the project to the point where you will know more about it than anyone else.
Getting your name on a paper as an UG, or even post-UG as a full-time lab tech is as much about luck and timing as anything else (many on SDN have said this same thing). IMO, if you walk in on a more established lab which already has protocols optimized and ideas refined, with more projects going and full schedules for publishing data in effect, you stand a better chance at getting in at the right point.
But like many above have said, research isn't all about publication. It's great to have a supportive and caring faculty to work with, and the LOR will be a great asset as well as your mentor's future career advice. It very well may determine which medical schools you apply to, as your impression of research is created by the environment where you start actually practicing it. Don't stress too much about selecting the "perfect lab." Keep your ear to the ground and make sure there aren't a bunch of horror stories associated with a certain group, and check out the lab website to see if you find the research interesting. Other than that, I wouldn't worry too much about the "publication schedule" because it's very challenging to predict.
For the record, I've had several past PIs tell me on the first day they will get my name on a paper; several projects followed through, several didn't. You can't predict these things well unless they are literally writing the manuscript as they interview you.
In terms of your "own project," this is most likely something that is a side project set aside for rotational lab techs that is incomplete, or a side idea of the PI that the grad students/post-docs aren't working on. Maybe it will be an existing project that needed some extra hands on deck. I wrote a grant proposal for my own research idea, and got NIH funding, but this is rare when you are young (I had a lot of help with it, so not trying to toot my own horn). Your influence will be felt by what you do with the project-a good mentor will guide you, but will let you introduce your own ideas and will encourage you to read literature and invest yourself in the project to the point where you will know more about it than anyone else.
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It differs from lab to lab. Some labs will want you to work with another student, or grad student, or lab tech, or post-doc, or whoever for awhile until it looks like you can handle your own project. Others will just say "WELCOME ABOARD! HAVE FUN SWIMMING, TRY NOT TO DROWN!" and toss you into your own project from day 1.
As for your other questions, a project is just long-term directed research. Most undergrads only take a project far enough to warrant a thesis. Others will get far enough to tell a whole story and warrant a publication. The project you do could be anything. It will have something to do with the PI's research interests since they rarely have any interest in using precious lab resources to investigate something that has nothing to do with their interests. As for how much the PI will help you in designing a project, that too differs. Some PIs won't even encourage you to find a project and will only give you one when you approach them with a good idea that you've already researched and designed. Others will hand you a project they've been wanting to do for awhile but didn't have enough labor/anyone willing to do it until you showed up. From what I've seen, the latter is much more common.
My experiences have taught me that it's the established PIs who are most likely to do what you're describing. Once they have tenure and have become satisfied with their achievements they tend to not have as much motivation to get stuff done, which results in manuscripts languishing in PI desk limbo. New PIs, the people who only just got their labs up and running, need to make a name for themselves, and have only 5-6 years to make a bum rush to tenure, those people are the ones who get **** done and will make your CV shine bright enough to blind anyone who reads it. They're often interested in attracting grad students and post-docs to the lab, and the best way to do that is to get senior author on everything which in turn means taking some underling in their lab and flooding his CV with publications and posters ("Hey, if this undergrad got all this in my lab just imagine what YOU'LL get!").
Something else to look out for is lab funding. Labs with steady, good funding can focus more on research and publishing than grant writing. Labs without funding are usually laser focused on only getting more funding, and put everything off to the side while they do so (you can't do research without funding, so your PI cares a hell of a lot more about securing an R01 than he does about getting Joe Undergrad's pet project published). It also helps if you insert yourself into a project that directly stems from one of the lab's funded aims. The NIH doesn't like it when a funded research aim turns up little to nothing, so labs have to publish as much as they can to have a chance at future funding. If your project happens to be researching one of those aims and you get publishable results, rest assured the lab will publish it in a timely manner. If you're doing some side-project you thought up or that your PI gave you because "I've always been interested in doing this experiment but never had the time", then you're at an increased risk of the lab forgetting your project even exists the day it's finished.
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I think you misunderstood me. You definitely do want to be in charge of your own project. You may not come up with the idea or design the experiment, but you should be the one setting the schedule, running the experiment, collecting the data, analyzing the data, and writing up the results. What I meant when I said you should try to insert yourself into a funded research aim is that you want to have an independent project all your own that is a part of one of the lab's current grants (a research aim is a term that indicates a line of research the PI intends to pursue with the grant money; typically a grant will have multiple research aims which may each be a project or may each be multiple projects). In other words, if possible, don't let a PI put you on some side-project that he's merely "curious" about, but rather try to get put on a project that's actually a main focus of the lab. Probably the best way to do that is to ask to look at the PI's most recent/active grant, read it, look at the aims, ask what projects people in the lab are currently doing, and then ask if you can do a project related to one of the aims that no one else is currently doing. Keep in mind though that some PIs may not be willing to let an undergrad have control of an important project, hence why a lot of them try to put undergrads on projects that the PI won't care about if they get botched by undergrad incompetence.
Anyway, I've done two independent projects. One was handed to me by a PI when I asked to do an independent project and had already been ironed out for the most part since a previous undergrad had already started on it before I arrived. That project took me about two years to complete in addition to another year of analysis and writing and I was the guy doing most of the work (I had some techs/other undergrads who would occasionally help out, but for the most part it was a one-man operation).
The other project I did is one I'm actually currently doing right now. In this case I actually thought up the idea for the project myself, designed it for the most part, and I'm running the actual experiment with an undergrad we have in our lab for the summer along with some help from the PI since certain parts go much easier/faster with three people. I imagine I'll also be the guy doing most of the analysis and writing (assuming the data make it publication worthy).
The difference between having your own project and just doing a lot of work on someone else's can be kind of hard to discern sometimes. Generally I'd say that you've got your own project if you're the guy your lab views as being responsible for it, you do most of the work, and you make an intellectual contribution. In other words, if the project were written up, you should be first author.
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I agree with this. The caveat can be that if it's YOUR project, you have a better chance of being the 1st author (name that goes first on a publication), especially if you write the draft of the manuscript, yourself. If someone else (postdoc, grad student) does a significant amount of work on a project and you "take over," it very well mean that you are going to be a second (etc) author.
Probably doesn't matter much for med school at all in terms of the order, but 1st author papers are>>>than anything else because it shows you were the boss.
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It can and does happen, yes. But it's rare, at least when talking about the kind of intellectual contribution that would stick in your lab's memory or get your name in a paper. Partly because it's rare for an opportunity like that to present itself, and partly because as an undergrad you will very likely not have the knowledge necessary to recognize/exploit that opportunity when it comes along. I have heard of it happening before though. For example, I was at a guest seminar recently where a professor mentioned that a project in his lab had hit a dead end until an undergrad in his lab came up with a new hypothesis along with an experiment that turned out to be the solution to the problem. Like I said though, that's very rare, and you shouldn't be counting on something like that to happen to you.
What I was really talking about when I said "intellectual contribution" though was writing the paper and/or analyzing the data (and not just plugging in values into a spreadsheet but actually doing the statistics, making the graphs, and drawing conclusions), and it's unlikely that someone who is running a project is going to give up those responsibilities to you since doing both of those things is enough to warrant being first author.
If all you want is second author though then you can absolutely get that by just working on someone else's project. However, do be aware that middle author is a big step down from first author. You really should be trying to get your own project. Even if you don't get a publication out of it at all, having led your own project is much more impressive than being a lab monkey and getting middle author on a paper. Getting middle authorship isn't hard. Taking a project from start to finish is.
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That's about as much as you'll get in the undergrad stage. Even "my own project" is a subset of my post-doc's project, which is a subset of this huge thing my PI is doing. Even for grad students, it can take up to a year to really get the hang of things in the lab; you need to learn procedures and get your hand held for a while before you can start running trials on your own. I've been in my current lab for about a year and there are still a ton of things I don't know how to do yet on my own, but I'm picking it up and slowly gaining independence. Especially since you haven't taken any upper division bio courses yet, there's no way you'll get any more independence than you have right now. You DO need to have some knowledge of the subject before you can get independence, no matter how big the lab is, or how caring the faculty. If "no one cared," you wouldn't even have a postdoc telling you what to do; they'd probably just stick you in a corner doing basic procedures. Also, as was stated before, your "PI" is probably just a grad student; the actual PI would be his/her advisor, or whoever runs the lab.
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Another hinderance to an underling making intellectual contribution, is the willingness of a graduate student or postdoc or PI to listen to what you have to say. I worked with a graduate student, whose experiments failed - often. They had a very theoretical/idealistic approach to their projects rather than a practical one - I tried to intervene several times, but my eagerness to help was often met with indignation and arrogance. I even purposefully deviated from their protocols, and it got their experiments to work most of the time - but when explaining what I had done differently, I received only verbal abuse for an alleged 'inherent and glaring disregard for authority," despite the successful outcome of my purposeful decision to alter the experimental protocol. So even if you have the capacity to make intellectual contributions, you may not have the clout or credibility among your superiors that they would consider your ideas.
It's a shame too - this graduate student could have saved 100's of hours in wasted experiment time if they were just willing to listen and consider that they could be wrong. Their problem, not mine.
It's a shame too - this graduate student could have saved 100's of hours in wasted experiment time if they were just willing to listen and consider that they could be wrong. Their problem, not mine.
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My PI (and other people I know had the same experience) told me that I would be having my own project next year.
IMO there is no harm in just asking your PI if you are going to have more autonomy in the coming months/years. He's not going to yell at you or kick you out of the lab, if anything, he will be impressed.
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Sweet talk him for a few minutes then ask "I was wondering if you have a project in mind where I could take on more responsibility?"
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Is it common for a new undergrad volunteer to a research lab to be doing menial tasks for awhile before starting any possible, independent projects? I'm starting in my first lab on Friday and when I met with the PI of the lab last week, he mentioned that I would be helping him finish a few projects that he had been working on and asked me if I was comfortable working independently. He mentioned that he didn't typically have volunteers in his lab in wanting them to get something for the work done in his lab and if things go well, he offered me the chance to gain credit to do direct research in his lab come fall. For summer, it sounded like I would be helping out in making mutant strains of a fungal pathogen he does work with so I'm guessing he'll show me how to do PCR my first day. Any thoughts are appreciated.
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I think the level of responsibility given to undergraduates depends a lot on the PI, but overall you'll have to prove yourself before they start trusting you with more important parts of the project. One idea might be to do some extra literature reading, think about follow-up experiments to what you're doing, and pitch them to your PI when you get a chance. Also if you meet with them to talk about data, make sure you have some thoughts on it or at least good questions prepared.
As has been said, it's rare that undergrads get truly independent projects -- and this makes sense because frankly we rarely have the time or the training to succeed with them. My experience working with grad students and post-docs has been very positive. I think the key is that you find someone who is willing to teach and include you in intellectual discussions of your project, not just give you the grunt work they don't feel like doing. Talking with previous undergrads who worked in the lab about their experiences is usually a good way to find out who you want to ask to be your mentor.
Violagirl -- it may be different with your PI, but generally PIs wouldn't take the time to personally train undergrads in basic techniques like PCR. Find yourself a grad student in the lab that you can ask day-to-day questions about, and I think you and your PI will be much happier!
As has been said, it's rare that undergrads get truly independent projects -- and this makes sense because frankly we rarely have the time or the training to succeed with them. My experience working with grad students and post-docs has been very positive. I think the key is that you find someone who is willing to teach and include you in intellectual discussions of your project, not just give you the grunt work they don't feel like doing. Talking with previous undergrads who worked in the lab about their experiences is usually a good way to find out who you want to ask to be your mentor.
Violagirl -- it may be different with your PI, but generally PIs wouldn't take the time to personally train undergrads in basic techniques like PCR. Find yourself a grad student in the lab that you can ask day-to-day questions about, and I think you and your PI will be much happier!
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Don't worry! If he offers to show you, then that's great. I'd recommend looking up a protocol beforehand so you have some idea of it going in. Definitely also ask about where to find written copies of lab-specific protocols as well. Once you've met the lab, do try to find someone you can ask "little" questions to. You won't want to run to your PI every time you can't find something in lab (which will happen more often than you think, esp in the beginning!).
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Thank you so much! I definitely see if I can find a protocol of PCR online to get a feel for it ahead of time. And definitely will, I'm hoping I'll get a chance to meet other lab members on Friday. It sounds like they work with you until they are sure you're good to work independently then. 🙂