Which Research Is More Interesting?

[questionstoask]

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Say i'm applying to grad school and need to do some thesis project. I am just interested in something practical. For example if there was a drug that could increase your erythropoetin or block myostatin or otherwise do something that could change a healthy human, it would be interesting for me. But i couldnt find any of those, so which of these projects comes closest:


1) Understanding the distinct and synergistic roles of TG2 and FXIIIA during bone formation.

2)We are interested in ambitious qualified students with excellent qualifications who want to work in any area related to the broad area of peptide growth factors and neoplasia.

3) Design of hemostatic peptides to mitigate battlefield hemorrhage.

4) Role of telomerase in neuronal cell survival; Role of telomerase in resistance to cancer cell death.

5) Regulation of eicosanoid formation by oxidative stress;Role of eicosanoids in asthma.
6) Study of the role of chemokines and their receptors in diaphragm muscle injury and repair mechanisms, using a mouse model of muscular dystrophy and chemokine knockout mice. ; Development of methods for efficient gene therapy to the diaphragm and other muscles.

 

[armybound]

There are drugs in testing at Wyeth for myostatin blocking..

Which one sounds most interesting to you? You're doing the research, not us.

I think 3 and 6 sound interesting, personally.

 

[Funky]

My friend's doing research in mitigating battlefield hemorrhages. So I vote for that one! 👍

 

[spanamit]

The telomerase research sounds pretty interesting to me.

 

[johnstonburg]

6-- most open ended and novel of all the topics

 

[questionstoask]

There are drugs in testing at Wyeth for myostatin blocking..

Which one sounds most interesting to you? You're doing the research, not us.

I think 3 and 6 sound interesting, personally.

i can only apply for projects at my school. and there is nothing on myostatin at my school. the projects i have chosen are supposed to be most closely related in terms of practicability. for example a completely unrelated(to myostatin) project that would definitely interest me "trying to invent a device that would make a person blow less alcohol into a dui detector than he really has inside of him" or "to metabolize alcohol much quicker" or "properties of drugs like scopolamine".

yeah i think 3-6 fit my criteria more than others. but 1 and 2 seem to be most enthusiastic about recruiting students.
i think problem with 3) there are already drugs that do this function, i find it hard to believe that they will suddenly come up with much better drugs while im there.
but basically 3-6 all seem equally interesting to me. and even 1&2 arent much different. it seems you focus on some compound or gene(in #2 they do clinical trials with some anti-cancer compound) and you just do a bunch of labwork and creat little if any progress.

 

[questionstoask]

thanks for the responses. keep'em coming please! in a few days i'll try to rank these projects and i'll start emailing professors. perhaps all 6 of them will reject me.

 

[Pink08]

Just another thought...who are the P.I.'s you'd be working with? Depending on how much you want to get out of it....

1) Will the PI be around? Or around too much? (i.e. a micro-manager, or even a pico-manager!!! lol) What about the other people in the lab...or lack of people?

2) Are they easy to talk with...and communicate with about the project so you will really understand what's going on?

3) Does the PI publish a lot? What's his/her reputation? (do a Pubmed search...check out their latest papers...do the techniques interest you?)


Sometimes it's not necessarily the specific project you're working on. The people you work with will greatly influence your enthusiasm for the subject. A lab could be working on a special class of drug inhibitors...but if your advisor is never around to communicate with you, you might not get much out of the experience.

Just a thought...good luck with whatever you pick....

 

[questionstoask]

Just another thought...who are the P.I.'s you'd be working with? Depending on how much you want to get out of it....

1) Will the PI be around? Or around too much? (i.e. a micro-manager, or even a pico-manager!!! lol) What about the other people in the lab...or lack of people?

2) Are they easy to talk with...and communicate with about the project so you will really understand what's going on?

3) Does the PI publish a lot? What's his/her reputation? (do a Pubmed search...check out their latest papers...do the techniques interest you?)


Sometimes it's not necessarily the specific project you're working on. The people you work with will greatly influence your enthusiasm for the subject. A lab could be working on a special class of drug inhibitors...but if your advisor is never around to communicate with you, you might not get much out of the experience.

Just a thought...good luck with whatever you pick....

thanks! so far my ranking is 6,3,2,5,1,4 based on the abstracts of their papers.
i cannot answer questions 1&2 unless i have worked in their labs. but as for question3, professor 2 has the most publications, followed by 6. professor 3 has very few publications but the abstracts are interesting... professor6 does have most "practicality" that i'm looking for, in his techniques.

Another thing is that professor6 teaches a course and some of the professors listed teach courses, so it's easy for them to recruit students, and that means it's hard for me to get hired without any prior research experience(need some luck).
so i'll come back on monday and by that time if my rankings dont change, i'll start sending some emails!