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Hello, I am an incoming first year MD/PhD student. I need to select a lab for a summer rotation. I am bit confused about where to go with this. My background is basically in clinical neuroscience; I've worked on related topics for roughly the last 7 years. I am fairly keen on this area. During my gap year, I have been doing more bioinformatics work and I really like it; I would much prefer to do a 'dry PhD' focusing on transcriptomic analysis, biomarker detection etc. as much as possible.
From a clinical perspective, I am really drawn to neurology. However, there are not many labs doing the type of clinical neuroscience I have experience in where I am headed. Hence, I guess my question is, should I prioritize labs that do work most similar to my research interests? Or is previous record of graduating students that publish and match well within reasonable time frames who use the techniques that interest me more important? I've always heard that you should match your research to your clinical interests as much as possible, but how much "spin" is tolerated? I.e. Would more psychiatry focused research be deleterious if you want to match neuro?
Thank you so much for your time and help!
From a clinical perspective, I am really drawn to neurology. However, there are not many labs doing the type of clinical neuroscience I have experience in where I am headed. Hence, I guess my question is, should I prioritize labs that do work most similar to my research interests? Or is previous record of graduating students that publish and match well within reasonable time frames who use the techniques that interest me more important? I've always heard that you should match your research to your clinical interests as much as possible, but how much "spin" is tolerated? I.e. Would more psychiatry focused research be deleterious if you want to match neuro?
Thank you so much for your time and help!