A lot of trial and error can lead to some truly amazing results.
Everyone knows the old mantras: “don’t be too harsh on yourself” and “everyone makes mistakes.” When I joined a lab, though, not only were those mantras pushed to the back of my head, but they also collected dust and withered. In a lab setting, when you are aware of the money and effort other people have put into the research, and when you sometimes feel less skilled as an undergrad, your mistakes can feel like grave failures.
Continue reading Of Mistakes and Bullies in the Lab
After the first meeting of the semester with my adviser, whom I’ve been working with since my first-year spring, I looked at the list of papers I had to read for my junior independent work but chose to open the small birthday card my adviser gave me on behalf of the lab. Seeing everyone’s “Happy Birthday” made me feel, more than ever before, like I belonged.
And I was growing up.
I was energized, ready to take on a new responsibility. Since the conversation I had with my PI over the summer, I had been excited to get started. Coming into Princeton interested in memory and potential ways to manipulate unwanted or negative ones, getting to use eye trackers to exert top-down control over what people look at and induce forgetting by weakening the activation of the related pathways based on the eye gaze pattern seemed like a sci-fi movie coming to life. I couldn’t wait to feel ownership over my own project and contribute to the kind of work my lab cares so much about.
After two years, I started to feel like I was equipped to excel on all fronts at Princeton.
But reality… hit.
Continue reading Growing Up in the Same Lab
What does it take to become a researcher?
The Making of a Researcher is a new mini-series exploring the paths scientists take to reach where they are today, highlighting their growth from beginners to experts.
Through interviews with faculty members in various fields, we’ll explore the necessary steps to becoming a researcher and how Princeton professors play a part in that process.
In this first feature, Professor Casey Lew-Williams, Chair of the Psychology Department and Director of the Princeton Baby Lab, reflects on his journey in developmental psychology and his role as a mentor to aspiring students in the field.
Continue reading The Making of a Researcher: Mentor First, Scientist SecondThis summer, Zara Hommez traveled from Princeton to Doha, Qatar, for an internship at the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), where she worked in the Humanitarian AI division. As a sophomore majoring in Operations Research and Financial Engineering (ORFE), she was drawn to the placement through Princeton’s International Internship Program (IIP) because it offered a rare blend of quantitative modeling, computer vision, and real-world impact, which is the exact intersection she hopes to pursue.
When browsing IIP opportunities, QCRI immediately stood out. Its mission to use data and AI to address global humanitarian challenges aligned perfectly with her academic interests in optimization, systems thinking, and applied machine learning. The chance to live in Doha, a rapidly growing, modern city at the heart of the Middle East, added an exciting cultural dimension she was eager to explore.
Many STEM majors here have the same rite of passage: core lab. For non-lab majors, core lab is a class that is purely to teach you about lab techniques and critical thinking skills that are useful for writing our theses. They usually involve a bit of a simulated lab experience where you discover new findings while the teachers guide you through the motions of a lab research experience.
Molecular biology’s core lab meets twice a week for 3 hours and then a small 50 minute lecture/precept on Fridays for half the semester. Other majors have similar constraints. However, while at first it may seem a bit overwhelming and even redundant if you’ve already done these procedures in a lab or are in a lab that definitely will not be using any procedures you learn, core lab goes beyond just teaching you technical skills.
I too was confused as to why I was here and why this mattered, but over time, I began to internalize one of the real skills this class is meant to teach you, something that pipetting will never give you: asking the right questions.
Continue reading In Defense of Core Lab
When I boarded my flight to Munich this summer, I thought I knew exactly what awaited me: labs buzzing with experiments and discoveries, even a big “Aha!” moment that would shape my research career. After spending over a month home in Thailand, beach hopping and exploring the underwater world with my scuba diving gear, I was ready to slip back into my academic shoes and make the most out of my time in a new country.
What I found was… not quite what I expected.
While I had overestimated how sparkly the research world would be, I didn’t even come close to imagining how many lessons I would learn or how many memories I would make.
Continue reading Research, Friends, Mountains, and Everything in Between
Spring is a bit of a bittersweet time for me every year. When the sun comes out, so does any brain cell willing to do work. Summer is right around the corner, and things just seem to drag–even in the quick Princeton semesters. However, that ‘summer right around the corner’ thought is not always an exciting one. With summer comes the prospect of internships, and perhaps more pressing: the lack of thereof. In a previous post, I discussed tips for applying to internships, but by now, you may have already heard back. If you have heard back and the email made your heart sink to your stomach, this post is for you. I’m here to remind you that internship rejections are not the end of the world.
Continue reading The Art of Bouncing Back
I think mentorship can be highly overlooked in the undergraduate community. This is mostly because we feel that professors and Ph.D. students can be so far in their own fields, and so we’re just intruding in on their time. They’re so impressive that it is almost intimidating. However, in hindsight, you start to realize how important their mentorship becomes in your life. I think a lot of undergraduates value mentorship in the sense that they’re being given an opportunity in the current moment to do research or work on a project. This is the perspective I had on mentorship when I entered research. Luckily, for me, mentorship turned out to be so much more; it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Continue reading The Beauty of Mentorship
Cold-emailing a professor can feel like yelling into the void. You’ve pinpointed your field of interest, done the research on the lab and professor you want to work with, and yet—there’s so much uncertainty. You don’t know what the response will be, or if you’ll even get one at all. You don’t know if the void will yell back, or if your voice will simply disappear.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t maximize your chances. After crafting and sending a few emails, I started to see what actually makes a difference—and it’s not just about hitting “send.”
Continue reading Cracking Cold Emails: Reaching Out to Professors in a Way that Works
As someone who completed my junior independent work under Professor Walker’s guidance last semester, I’ve had the chance to witness his thoughtful mentorship firsthand. In a research culture where both the technical challenge and emotional uncertainty can feel overwhelming, I’ve come to appreciate how crucial the human side of research is—how we learn from and grow with those who guide us. With that in mind, I sat down with Professor Walker to explore how he thinks about mentorship: what it looks like, why it matters, and how he helps students, like me, find their footing in the world of research.
Continue reading Paying it Forward: A Faculty Perspective on Mentorship in Research
