General Information for Interested Undergrads and Masters Students

From GersteinInfo

A bit of a multi-step plan:

1 * See work of past and present undergrads, and what it's like to be in the lab

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

(the above only includes a selection of ~60 undergrads that spent substantial amounts of time in the lab)

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

(These have included STARs students and perspective science students.)

2 * Next, glance at their papers

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 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 may also want to look at the Yale Daily News article mentioning work of one of our undergrads: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2005/mar/23/students-papers-hit-the-presses/

3 * Drill into some very easy-to-read papers

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

in particular,

1. simulations: http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/watersim-sciam/
2. genomics: http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/sciam2
3. proteomics:http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/amsci/

4 * You might want to look at some press write-ups as well.

See Selected Press Accounts Highlighting Gerstein Lab Work

5 * The above steps (1 to 4), give 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 a initial project

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

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

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

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

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