General Information for Interested Undergrads and Masters Students

From GersteinInfo

Revision as of 19:17, 22 August 2020

Undergraduate students 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, computer science, or math, and are at least familiar with or curious about aspects of all three fields.

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. (See https://twitter.com/MarkGerstein/status/1268719130900926465 .)

B * See examples of past and present undergrads, and what it's like to be in the lab.

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

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

The above only includes a selection of ~60 undergrads that spent substantial amounts of time in the lab. (These have included STARs students and perspectives in science students.)

Here are some undergraduate stories.

Undergrads 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 a 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 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. cancer: http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/nrgnccan/
2. genomics: http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/sciam2/
3. simulations: http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/watersim-sciam/
4. proteomics: http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/amsci/
5. science policy: http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/genomicsandprivacy

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 steps provide 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*.

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