researching with a professor

I said something along the lines of...I am thoroughly intrigued by this material and wanted to know if there is any way I can become more involved in it. I really want to become a part of and contribute to a research team.

It's not hard to get involved in research and professors are usually willing to accept serious, hard working students.

 

You should def give research a try, i loved it during undergrad. I want to continue it in pharm school but haven't found time yet.

What I did in undergrad was look up different research labs and their specific research. My school had a whole building devoted to all types of cancer research and I was interested in that so I looked up professors - usually in their profile it says what their research is about. I would email a few (3-4) professors expressing my interest specifically toward their research and ask if they could take on student to help out. You should email a few people because usually most labs already have student volunteers or they don't want them... i only got 2 responses from these professors. 1 had a spot, the other didn't. Luckily I got to research at that lab in melanoma which was really fun & exciting.

I suggest you talk to that AIDs professor to see if there is a spot open, if not, email a few other professors on campus. Good luck!

 

Hm. First off don't be overly corny when contact professors. Email a few of those professors, tell them exactly why you want to join a lab. Every lab has a purpose/project, so I'm sure you'll be able to find some kind of info on that somewhere. Tie that into what you want to do, WHY you want to work in a lab in the first place (more research experience, interest in AIDS, etc). Back when I was a freshman I emailed a few professors and flat out told them I never got a great research experience when I was at other labs (during high school), and want to be able to work on my own in a lab on campus. I love the lab where I work at now, and the projects tie in perfectly with courses I'm taking right now.

 

I was working for a few weeks with my Organic Chem II professor, but he told me that it would be futile unless I was actually planning on doing Chemistry, otherwise I'd just be padding my resume (which he didn't want me to be doing). So I left.

 

Definitely just go talk to your professor or e-mail her about the possiblity of working in the lab. A lot of professors seem happy to take on hard-working undergrads.

If you can't find anything about her research online, you could try searching in pubmed by last name to find recent papers by your professor and read those to try to get some sense of her research (however, depending on your research experience, scientific papers could be hard to understand).