General Information for Interested Undergrads and Masters Students

From GersteinInfo

Undergraduate, masters and MD students and come to Gerstein Lab from a mix of backgrounds and interests. The lab is inherently interdisciplinary, using high performance computing and quantitative methods to address biological and biomedical questions. Undergraduate students in Gerstein Lab typically major in one or sometimes two fields related to biology and other natural sciences, CS or data science, and are at least familiar with or curious about aspects of all three fields. Below is a bit of a multi-step plan.

A * Think about what type of opportunity do you want?

We offer:

1. paid research during the semester,
2. summer jobs
3. supervision for research classes and theses (for credit)
4. full-time employment during the academic year for either postgraduates or those taking a year off from college

All of the work can be done completely remotely . We had a huge influx during the summer of '20 due to pandemic.

B * See examples of past and present students.

http://www.gersteinlab.org/people/

http://www.gersteinlab.org/people/alumni.html

The above only includes a selection of students who spent substantial amounts of time in the lab. (These have included STARs students and perspectives in science students.)

Here are some Yale undergraduate stories about what it's like to be in the lab. Also, a statistical summary of undergraduate involvement in the lab

Undergrads and masters students have done a variety of things in the lab -- e.g. done summer jobs or taken research for-credit courses. An example of a research course project done by an undergraduate is: http://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs290/14-15a/gonzalez.ian.isg2

You may also want to look at the Yale Daily News article mentioning the work of one of our undergrads: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2005/03/23/students-papers-hit-the-presses/

C * Read some of our papers.

In particular, see :

http://papers.gersteinlab.org/subject/student

(The above is a selection of papers involving undergrads in the lab from the lab publication corpus, http://papers.gersteinlab.org . The convention in the biological sciences is for the lab head to be the last author; the first author leads the project; and the middle authors help out.)

Here are some examples (first-author papers by lab undergrads who spent quite a bit of time in the lab):

1. http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/molmovdb2 (A very physical paper done by a senior undergrad. who worked in the lab in a 5th year.)
2. http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/bayesloc-jmb (A fairly genomic paper done by BS/MS MB&B student)
3. http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/pubnet (A computational tool done by a CS undergrad. in his last year.)

You can also drill into some very easy-to-read papers about the lab:

http://papers.gersteinlab.org/subject/intro-to-lab

In particular,

1. Multi-omics: https://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/Entex/
2. Single-cell: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38562822/
3. Privacy: https://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/plight/index.html
4. LLM - https://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/BioCoder/index.html
5. Science of Science - https://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/tigperspec/index.html

D * You might want to look at our research summary and some press write-ups as well.

See http://www.gersteinlab.org/research and Selected Press Accounts Highlighting Gerstein Lab Work

Flipping through a few lectures is also easy.

E * The above provides you some context. Now if you're interested, you might want to talk to current senior PhD students and postdocs in the lab, who could potentially be mentors for an initial project.

http://www.gersteinlab.org/people/

(These can often be listed by their initials -- e.g. JR = Joel Rozowsky .)

You might want to contact these people with a CC back to Mark.

F * Finally, write back to Mark with some summary thoughts on the above and then arrange a meeting.

Any arrangement is possible. The only rule is don't be a *FLAKE*.

G * An overview of the usual procesure after the meeting with Mark:

1. Mark will give you a list of names to contact, usually around 5 people.
2. You write to them and talk about research interest and possible projects.
3. Pick one to be your mentor.
4. Contact Lisa Adams(lisa.adams@yale.edu) to finish the onboarding process.

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People in lab should watch out this tag in relevant correspondence:

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