are you going to matriculate this fall? dr. cinotti said if you're interested in research the summer before you start to contact her. if you're still along in the pre-dent-ness, i would e-mail her either way and see what she says.
So Dr. C got back to me, and the short story is to contact [email protected] (the Associate Research Administrator, Baljit Moonga). I don't know if he has a phd or not, so I don't know how to address him. But there you are.
Anyway, I worked in labs for the last two years, and generally, you can put in a whole range of hours depending on what you're doing. Like, I would put in 8 hours the first year because I was only running one type of protocol, while this year I go like 10-15 hours a week because I'm working on my independent study. If I did more hours a week, my project could be faster. You could also work full time potentially, but it's up to the PI (principal investigator) to determine that (it's his/her money she has to pay you with, unless we won't get paid for this hmmm). All-in-all, it's very flexible.