MBB Major Research Courses
List of Recent Undergraduate Student Advisors
Information on Undergraduate Research Fellowships

One of the main requirements for undergraduate majors in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and is to perform a research project. The goal of this requirement is to further expose students to a research environment and provide practical training for careers in medicine, and academic or industrial research. It is our belief the best way to learn science is by doing science.

Undergraduate research may be carried out with any science faculty member at Rutgers University or at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). However, in order for MBB students to register for independent research (MBB courses 694:381,382,481,482,495,496) students must obtain special permission from their MBB academic advisors. Forms for special permission numbers can be obtained from the undergraduate secretary for MBB. It is advisable to meet with your academic advisor at least once a semester. In this way, they can follow your progress and provide guidance and suggestions on career choices. This interaction is also important from the perspective of the department because it helps us to track how students are doing and how it can make improvements.

Although there are over 240 faculty that work in the biological sciences on the Busch and Cook campuses, many of these professors can, at most, take only one or two undergraduate students for research projects. In addition, students from other departments, such as Genetics, Chemistry and Biology, are also looking for research opportunities during the summer and academic year. It is therefore advisable that you do not wait until the end of the spring semester to start your search for a summer research. We also suggest that you talk to several professors so that you can get a feel for the different labs and styles of research.

An excellent place to start your search is to browse through the research descriptions of each professor in the Faculty Listing of the Rutgers-UMDNJ Graduate Programs in the Molecular BioSciences. This listing provides a brief description of the research interests of each faculty in the program, along with their addresses and a list of some of their current papers. Research descriptions of the faculty can also be found on the Rutgers home pages for each of the departments or graduate programs.

If you find a description in the catalog of a professor whose laboratory you might be interested in, read some of their recent research papers. This will not only provide you with detailed information on what the lab is doing, but it will also provide background for discussions with the professor. This will also demonstrate to the professor that you are interested in his/her research and will indicate that you are motivated. It should be noted that after a month or so, when the instructors in the 315 course have had a chance to see how well you perform in the lab, you would be able to use them as references. You will also have an advantage over students in other departments because you may have already learned some of the techniques that would be used in your research project.

When setting up an appointment with a professor keep in mind the following points:

• Indicate why you are specifically interested in their lab as opposed to any other lab at Rutgers/UMDNJ.
• Provide some background for yourself about what you have done and what you are interested in doing. (Honors courses, High School research, etc)

When meeting with a professor keep in mind the following points:

• Discuss what is going on in the lab and what projects are available.
• Is the project feasible in the time allowed? Will there be results within the time frame that you are in the lab or is this a long term project in which the answer may not be determined within your time in the lab.
• Be realistic in terms of the project and the accomplishments – If an experiment is extremely important for a grant, a paper, tenure etc. then it is likely that a full time, experienced person in the lab will be carrying it out. Until an undergraduate student has proven themselves, they usually are put on projects that are not the main focus of the lab or that serve to help some other member of the lab.
• Find out who will be directly training and supervising you. Is it the professor, graduate student, post-doc, or will you left on your own?
• It should be noted that most professors are usually very busy teaching, giving seminars, writing grants and papers as well as serving on committees, etc. Therefore, some no longer do lab work. Working with a graduate student or post-doc may provide significantly more time for interaction or guidance than with a professor. These lab personnel usually know where everything is and the current protocols, instead of the way they were done 10-20 years ago when the professor was at the bench.
• Talk with members of the lab. What are they doing? How do they like working there? Sometimes, what actually happens in the lab and how people interact with each other are very different from the impressions that you got from the professor. Will this lab be a place that you will enjoy being in over the next year?
  
  Keep in mind that the professor will be providing ideas, time, space, and money:

• Ideas: The professor will discuss the research that is going on in their laboratory and may provide a few suggestions as to projects that would be feasible for a new researcher and that would benefit both the student and the lab. In assigning a project, it usually means that other members of the lab will not be doing the exact same thing. Therefore the professor is depending on you to carry out the project.
• Time: Initially, you will require a lot of supervision to learn the system and master the techniques. Often things may not work right away, and therefore time must be spent by the professor, post-doc, graduate student or technician in training you and troubleshooting the experiments. Although this effort by other members of the lab is helpful training for you, it is also taking away time from their own experiments.
• Space: Space is often at a premium in many labs. In some big labs, people only have a few feet of bench space or work in shifts. Therefore providing a bench to an undergraduate may in turn mean that the lab is not able to provide space to a more experienced or long term researcher such as a graduate student or post-doc.
• Money: In an average molecular biology lab, each researcher (graduate student, post-doc, or technician) will use over $5,000 a year in supplies and reagents. In labs that use expensive reagents such as cell culture media or large quantities of enzymes, this number could easily be over $10,000 a year. Therefore, even working part time in the lab on your research project will easily cost the lab over $2,000 in reagents and supplies during the year.

Therefore in taking an undergraduate student into their lab, the professor is making a large commitment of resources to provide the necessary ideas, time, space, and reagents to carry out your research. The professor is therefore expecting a serious commitment from you to work hard and make an effort at getting the project to succeed. Working sporadically for a few hours a week, or not showing up for long periods of time, will not only be unrewarding for you, but will frustrate the professor and other members of the lab and may even impact on their research.

Benefits to the student: One of the main benefits of the undergraduate research requirement is that a professor will get to know you very well. A recommendation from this professor will therefore carry significantly more weight than references from professors in whose class you were only one of hundreds. Your research advisor will be able to strongly address your intelligence, motivation, efficiency, personality, etc. in their letters. It is therefore important that your project and the time spent in the lab are taken seriously. During the semester, students will be doing research for credit. It is expected that you will put in at least the required time for the amount of credits that you are taking. However to have a successful project, with results that could be published by the end, it usually requires more of a commitment. Most faculty realize that during the school year, courses, exams, graduate and medical school applications take a lot of time away from being in the lab. As a result, it is hard to get a lot accomplished during the academic year. This is especially true if students are entering the lab and learning the techniques during the semester. In order to help students get a jump-start on their project, and to allow them to concentrate research in the lab, we encourage students to spend the summers and breaks working full time in the lab. This not only helps the student get more of their project accomplished, but it also gives them a better appreciation of what it means to be a full time researcher.

Financial Support: In order to help students spend time in the lab over the summer, many labs are able to offer a subsistence stipend (approx. $3,000) over the summer. Although it is realized that there are often financial constraints on the students, and that it may be more profitable to work at a fast food place, it is hoped that this support will enable some students to start their projects during the summer. It has been our experience that most of the training and progress on the project is made during the summer. We therefore strongly encourage students to consider this option. When talking with the professor, inquire whether they can support you for the summer. Many labs have funds available from their grants or department to provide a summer stipend. Many of the Institutes and departments may also offer a stipend. There are also a number of internal and external fellowships that you can apply for. Most of these fellowships are competitive and will require you to write a short research proposal as part of the application. Information on applying for these fellowships can be found at this link. There are also summer internships available in industry. These tend to be more lucrative than the fellowships and are certainly more than most summer jobs pay.

It should be noted that having summer research and these fellowships on your resume will help in finding jobs and getting into graduate and medical schools.

MBB Major Research Options and Courses

List of Recent Undergraduate Student Advisors

Information on Undergraduate Research Fellowships