Category: Conduct Research

lab experiences, humanities research, fieldwork, archives, methods, problem solving, research based courses

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Conduct Research Independent Work Research Life

From Politics to Neuroscience: 5 Princeton Courses I’ll Never Forget

Photograph of Nassau Hall at night. Blueish-Green light is cast over the center of the building. The brick pathway leading up is wet and covered in fall leaves.
Rainy fall leaves will turn to snowy flakes before you know it; it’s never too early to plan some future courses!

“I have to wake up at 6:23 AM for course enrollment?!” Yes. You do. But you got this! It’s true that course enrollment is still a month away, but it is never too early to start drafting your schedule to avoid this “oh no” early-bird moment. Generally, I recommend taking courses that excite you, even if they are outside of your major, because before you know it you’ll be an old senior like me wishing you had time to take more. Everyone has a different taste in classes. I am a SPIA major who is passionate about service, social justice, and law, but I have tried to take unique and expansive research-based classes. Thus, without further ado, here are 5 of my most memorable classes at Princeton, in no particular order, and why they might be of interest to you:

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Conduct Research Get Started with Research

Missed the First ReMatch Dinners? I Got You Covered

Photo of ReMatch table at the Carl A. Fields Center Multipurpose Room. Mentors and mentees are standing around a tall bistro table covered in an orange tablecloth.
Great conversations were happening at the Computer Science and Quantum Studies table at the October 13th ReMatch Meet and Greet

Princeton gives its farthest walks to its strongest academic weapons. Still, sometimes schlepping all the way to the Carl A. Fields (CAF) Center is just a bit too much. If you felt like this around 6:00pm on Tuesday October 4th or Thursday, October 13th, you just may have missed the first ReMatch dinner. No worries! I am here to fill you in on what you missed and hopefully convince you that the next one is worth the walk. First things first, ReMatch (developed and led by the Office of Undergraduate Research and the Graduate School) is a program that helps match first- and second-year undergraduates interested in research with graduate student and postdoc researcher mentors. Mentor and mentee pairs that develop potentially embark on a summer of research in Princeton fully funded by the university. At the dinners, students can eat catered food, mingle, and chat with researchers at tables. 

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Conduct Research

A Budding Field: Finding Opportunities in Psychedelic Research

The logo for the Princeton Science of Psychedelics Club. A large three-dimensional ring with blue radiating ovals.
The logo for Princeton’s Science of Psychedelics Club (PSPC), a student-lead organization seeking to educate students about psychedelics, discuss current trends in psychedelic research, and provide opportunities to other students interested in pursuing psychedelic research. If interested in joining, contact PSPC@princeton.edu or President Camilla Strauss ’23 for more information.

One goal for any budding researcher is to see their work have a tangible public impact. But, with endless hours spent in a lab or hunched over a computer, there are times where research can feel abstract or removed from reality. Neuroscience, in particular, faces this stereotype. True, many (including myself) believe that neuroscience holds the key to understanding our conscience and, by extension, our modern predicament. But the question remains: where can an aspiring neuroscientist find the life-altering research they seek?

Ironically, the answer might just lie in reality-altering substances. From neuroscience to public policy, psychedelics is a budding topic across many different fields of research. While Princeton itself is yet to enter the field, the Princeton Science of Psychedelics Club (PSPC) serves as the hub for all students interested in this emerging field. I sat down with PSPC and senior Neuroscience Major President Camilla Strauss to talk about how students interested in psychedelics research could learn more. 

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Conduct Research

Independent Work Seminars as a COS BSE Student: An Interview with Shannon Heh ‘23

Image of Shannon Heh '23

Shannon Heh ’23 is currently Co-President of TigerApps, a member of KoKoPops dance team, and a member of Colonial Club

At Princeton, B.S.E.* computer science students are required to complete at least one semester of independent work (IW) during their junior or senior year. Students may either take an IW seminar, where a small group of students work on larger projects under a given theme, or a one-on-one IW, where students work and meet with their advisers independently.

Seminars had weekly meetings and provided more structure for students than a typical one-on-one project would; students were asked to choose their project ideas early and received valuable feedback through presenting and having their ideas workshopped by their peers in the seminar.

I met with Shannon Heh ‘23, a senior in the Computer Science department, to discuss her experience in an independent work seminar. Spring of her junior year, Shannon took COS IW 09: You Be the Prof, advised by Professor David Walker. Students were to produce a web-based platform, app, or tool to aid in teaching a particular topic, skill, or concept.

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Conduct Research

No Experience, No Problem! A Guide to Being the Newest in the Lab

Woman in lab coat arranges sample tubes in black ice bucket.
Woman in lab coat arranges sample tubes in black ice bucket.

Having no knowledge about Neuroscience at the time, I did not expect my experience taking Advanced Placement Psychology to amount to more than an interesting elective. However, I discovered my passion for research through Dr. Volpicelli-Daley, who came to our class to give a presentation about her research on Parkinson’s Disease with mouse models. She invited us to apply for a position as a research assistant in her lab, and I ended up getting the job. I worked with the Volpicelli-Daley research team at the University of Alabama at Birmingham during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school and then again over my gap year before coming to Princeton.

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Conduct Research Independent Work Present & Publish Findings

Submitted and Successful: 3 Final Steps Before Turning in Your First Paper

Photograph of Princeton University in the rain, with many students walking, biking, and scootering to class holding umbrellas or wearing rain jackets
These rainy, gloomy days are perfect for colorful umbrellas and cozy paper-writing sessions.

“Did I include a scholarly conversation? Where is the motive of my piece? Do I even have a thesis?!” The “Submit” button on Canvas can stir worrisome thoughts as it may seem permanent or stressful. The goal of this post is to walk you through a few final steps you can take to ensure that everything is in check and ready to go, so that you don’t feel like something is missing once turning in your assignment. These points are by no means the end all be all, but you may use them to help you feel more confident handing in your final product. Thus, without further ado, here are 3 final steps to follow before submitting your research paper.

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Conduct Research

I Survived getting rejected (and you can too)

Photo depicts a female-presenting Asian person with black glasses and long light hair staring at their laptop screen biting a pencil looking frustrated.
Woman looking at laptop screen and biting pencil in frustration

When I finally got rejected from the international internship in Portugal I applied to, I was crushed. I had worked so hard on the application, done practice interviews, and had relevant work experience. I felt that surely I would at least get an interview, and probably be welcomed into the program with open arms. I had chatted with someone else who did the same program and loved it, and I imagined myself strolling the glorious halls of the cutting-edge research facility I would work in. But then the notification date came and passed. “Oh well,” I thought, “I applied to some High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI) internships in cool places, surely one of those would work out!” Nope. With the summer break growing ever nearer, it seemed I was officially out of luck. It felt like all of my friends had these grand plans in places around the globe I never even imagined traveling, but I was stuck.

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Conduct Research Independent Work Present & Publish Findings

From Law to Coding: Writing my SPIA Quantitative Junior Paper

Photo depicts grand Princeton building at night time, with ivy climbing up brick that appears reddish in the lighting.
From courses at SPIA to starry nights at Nassau Hall, there are many opportunities to reflect on what type of research is meaningful to you

There are many reasons why I chose to major in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), ranging from the impact that we have through service and the focus on policy and law. One unique feature of SPIA is the ability for concentrators to take more qualitative courses such as SPI333: Law, Institutions, and Public Policy and quantitatively-based courses, such as POL346: Applied Quantitative Analysis. During the Fall of my junior year, I wrote a more qualitative junior paper on risk assessment tools in the pretrial adjudication system and analyzed whether or not they make more biased decisions than do humans (see here to read more about my experience). Headed into my junior spring, I was presented with the choice of writing another qualitative paper or joining a quantitative research lab. Thankfully, I felt confident in my coding abilities due to past courses I had taken which prepared me for this moment (see here to read about how I gained a quantitative background in R as a SPIA major). I chose the lab without hesitation and my spring semester independent research journey began.

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Conduct Research

Failure: Science’s Beauty and the Beast

In my junior year of high school, through my conversations with more and more teachers and scholars, I thought I had come to understand the importance of one inevitable piece of the scientific process (or really any academic discipline):

Failure.  

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Conduct Research Independent Work Present & Publish Findings

Experiences in the ReMatch+ Program: An Interview with Kasey Shashaty ’23 – Part 1

Kasey Shashaty is a junior majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She began working at the PULSe (Princeton University Laser Sensing) Lab in the summer of 2021 and has been working with them since. In this interview, Kasey and I discuss how she got involved in this lab through the ReMatch+ program, her experiences working in the lab both virtually and in-person, and where she is taking her experiences in the future. 

Kasey Shashaty ’23
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