research project

[ZiJing]

i'm planning on starting a research project within the coming months in order to boost my chances of getting into RSI and a half decent college. i'll be able to gain access to a biology lab at Rutgers University, or possibly(hopefully) at Princeton where i can conduct my research.

buuuuuuuuuut......

i have no ideas. this girl in my school, about a year older than me did a project similar to the kind i want to do, and she's going to the american association for the advancement of science(AAAS) convention on.....saturday to present her poster.....thats some freaking big accomplishment...her work was deemed "masters thesis material" or so im told...

any ideas on what i should do?

[ism]

If you have access to that lab, how are you getting it? Do you know someone? Is this someone currently involved in research? Then talk to that someone, read their recently published papers, and do something along those lines. If it's masters-level then you'll need a mentor, and you will be doing something related to their work, so it'd be wise to find one.

As for what project to actually do, keep in mind time and budget constraints, do a lot of research beforehand to make sure it's feasible, if you're actually doing an experiment consider doing a pilot instead (I assume you'll have one semester to use the lab?) since it's a little less involved, especially if you're concentrating more on instrumentation rather than analysis. Go for the poster, definitely, since that's a pretty big deal for the highschool level. Discuss the possibility of publishing a paper with your mentor, as it will require a drastically different level of work.

Also, are you going down a research path or is this just a way to bolster your chances of getting into a school?

[hooligan]

What kind of lab is this? Masters thesis material? I would like to see.

[deez nuts]

no mentor? according to your profile you're 16.

[ZiJing]

one of the clubs i'm in and will be co-pres next year does genetics experiments, and i'll be granted full access to a lab in the summer and throughout the whole of next school year, that's w/o a doubt. but i'm also fairly sure that i can get access before then, but i have yet to contact the profs there. i'm also pretty certain GEHealthcare's funding us for our supplies/samples. i'm not exactly sure what kind of lab, i assume its a generic bio lab w/ electro-phoresis(sp?), pcr machines, centrefuges, etc. equipment shouldn't be a prob.

and, yep, i'm 16. and i've yet to get in touch w/ a prof about this. so no mentor yet.

yea, the masters thesis research consisted of primarily of showing a high amount of genetic conservation in the exons of a couple of genes in c. elegans and c. remani.

the only idea i had already was trying to find out what causes stem cells to differentiate, but after reading around......i doubt thats within my grasp at this point.

[deez nuts]

well first things first which is the most obvious is: get in touch with your mentor and go from there.

[hooligan]

one of the clubs i'm in and will be co-pres next year does genetics experiments, and i'll be granted full access to a lab in the summer and throughout the whole of next school year, that's w/o a doubt. but i'm also fairly sure that i can get access before then, but i have yet to contact the profs there. i'm also pretty certain GEHealthcare's funding us for our supplies/samples. i'm not exactly sure what kind of lab, i assume its a generic bio lab w/ electro-phoresis(sp?), pcr machines, centrefuges, etc. equipment shouldn't be a prob.

and, yep, i'm 16. and i've yet to get in touch w/ a prof about this. so no mentor yet.

yea, the masters thesis research consisted of primarily of showing a high amount of genetic conservation in the exons of a couple of genes in c. elegans and c. remani.

the only idea i had already was trying to find out what causes stem cells to differentiate, but after reading around......i doubt thats within my grasp at this point.

lol. that i would like to see. you could probably do a research project on a particular differentiating marker, but who knows?