research process

Into the Unknown

Posted on November 4, 2024October 21, 2024 by Yubi Mamiya

Reflection on my personal experience tackling a new research paradigm

Yubi Mamiya presenting her findings on "Clinical trial simulation of ensitrelvir for SARS-CoV-2" to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center Infectious Disease Sciences Department. — *Yubi Mamiya presenting her findings on “Clinical trial simulation of ensitrelvir for SARS-CoV-2” to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center Infectious Disease Sciences Department.*

I’ve always believed in challenging myself to learn new methodologies and explore new fields in my research. Yet, there’s a fine balance between tackling a new challenge and feeling over your head. Reflecting on my past summer conducting a project in a completely new research paradigm, I wanted to take a moment to share my experience in the hopes of encouraging other students to be unafraid to undertake novel endeavors.

I had the life-changing opportunity to research the dose-response of the oral antiviral ensitrelvir for treating mild to moderate symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 with the Schiffer Lab starting this past June as an intern in the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center Infectious Disease Sciences Internship Program. This project employed a very different application of my interests in healthcare and computer programming than I’d ever done before. Wide-eyed with amazement and curiosity, I delved into the fields of pharmacology, clinical trials, mathematical modeling, infectious diseases, and computational simulations. I remember learning about my project goals for the first time and thinking: “Wow, there are thousands of other students who would make a much better intern on this project”. This overwhelming imposter syndrome is something that I’ve often struggled with during my past research experiences when walking into new fields for the first time. But, thanks to the incredible mentorship of the Schiffer Lab and the tips that they shared with me, I overcame this fear and was able to grow into a more interdisciplinary and confident researcher this summer. I hope to pass on this same inspiration to other students here.

A Hidden Gem for Humanities Researchers: The Princeton Index of Medieval Art

Posted on October 30, 2024October 23, 2024 by Ignacio Arias Philippi

Picture of a filing cabinet — *The Princeton Index of Medieval Art used to be a physical register, much like this one.*

Many academic disciplines engage with visual art, whether from the standpoint of art history, material culture, or even paleography. The Princeton Index of Medieval Art is a unique database well-suited to the needs of researchers across various fields. Whether history, comparative literature, art, or classics, the index gathers a vast amount of information on Late Antique and Medieval Artworks, neatly sorted in an accessible way.

Choosing A Lab: To Stay or To Go?

Posted on October 28, 2024October 21, 2024 by Rebecca Cho

Photo meant to show students in a laboratory setting. — *Students collaborating in a molecular biology laboratory. Photo credit: Matt Raspanti.*

Many students at Princeton spend their summers exploring a research project or a lab internship in their field of interest. But what’s next? Maybe you really enjoyed your experience and wanted to continue. Then, you come across the question: should I stay in the same lab or join a different lab?

This was the question I pondered when entering my sophomore year. I had an incredible summer experience as an High Meadows Environmental Institute intern in the Sigman Research Laboratory in the summer of 2023. I worked on a project that enabled my exploration of biogeochemical reconstruction via an investigation of the marine environment during a historical mass extinction through the use of a biological proxy known as foraminifera. But, where did I want to go from there? If you’re in a similar position, here are some things to keep in mind!

Surf’s Up: A Guide to Internet Surfing, and other Assorted Browsing Research Skills

Posted on October 16, 2024October 16, 2024 by Advik Eswaran

This image depicts a Google search of "What is research," which symbolizes the purpose of this post—i.e. figuring out how to research online. — *What is research? Perhaps we can ask the Internet…*

If you’re anything like me, you first thought that “research” essentially amounted to surfing the Internet. Back in the glory days of middle school, “research” meant the rewarded privilege of getting to use the laptop carts, productively using class time on googling information about our various project topics (and definitely not secretly playing games). Now, as the mature, worldly college student you now are, perhaps you think you know better. “True” academic research, the clever reader now knowingly tells themselves, is historians dusting through archival documents and scientists mixing frothy chemicals in the lab.

Yet there’s a missing part here: a crucial element that takes us back to our elementary and middle days of excited googling. To make any significant intellectual contribution to any field, one first has to understand the current state of knowledge in that same field. To borrow the term favored by the Writing Program, we need to understand the scholarly conversation. How do we know if we’re making a contribution to something, if we don’t understand what that something is? Understanding the current state of research in a given field is a crucially important skill—really, a prerequisite—for conducting your own effective research in that field.

Mentorship Matters: A Summer of Research and Growth

Posted on October 14, 2024October 14, 2024 by Nathan Nguyen

This image shows a lab technician pipetting a clear solution into an another orange-colored solution inside a fume hood in a lab — *Photo of a chem-bioengineering lab, photo credit to Iris Rubinstein.*

When I first walked into the lab this summer, I thought research was all about running experiments and gathering data. What I didn’t expect was how much the people around me—the mentorship and the shared triumphs and failures—would shape so much of my learning and how I view scientific research.

Starting a research position at a bioengineering lab over the summer was really intimidating for me, especially as an undergraduate. At the start, I felt like the most inexperienced person in a room full of graduate students, postdocs, and faculty who seem to have it all figured out. Although I’ve learned or at least seen a lot of the quantitative and qualitative components in my Chemical and Biological Engineering course, I did not have much hands-on experience and critical thinking that comes with actually doing experiments. That’s when I realized how big of a role a mentor plays.

My Go To Study Break

Posted on October 11, 2024October 11, 2024 by Stanley Stoutamire, Jr.

Photograph depicts the university side of Nassau Street adjacent to the library. Alongside the sidewalk to the left is a row ow trees turning golden orange on a clear autumn day. — *A walk along* *Nassau Street*

Princeton moves fast. The semester is short, the classes are dense, and before you know it, you’re taking midterms and turning in papers for your writing sem. At least, that was my experience as a first year. Even now as a sophomore, it can feel hard trying to keep up with the pace of the orange bubble. Balancing the demands of coursework alongside the demands of work for research teams and professional clubs can limit how productive I feel at any given moment. Those moments, when I feel I’ve done all the readings I can do and written everything I can think about, are so challenging because it feels like I’ve hit an academic wall. That’s when I find ways to shake things up with a study break. For me, that looks like taking a walk. I know it sounds cliche, but taking a walk can be one of the best solutions because it’s so simple.

Research Insights Series: An Interview with Gemma M. Sahwell

Posted on May 10, 2024May 9, 2024 by Rebecca Cho

An image of Gemma Sahwell — *Gemma M. Sahwell*
*PhD Candidate, Princeton University, Department of Geosciences*

As a Geosciences major, I am fascinated by ocean biogeochemical cycling and reconstruction of past climates and marine environments by way of biological proxies. Yet, I have also found myself intrigued in environmental movements and storytelling, particularly with the narratives of the land histories of indigenous communities in the backdrop of anthropogenic climate change and U.S. colonial history.

With growing interest in both fields, I enrolled in Professor Allison Carruth’s ENV238: Environmental Movements: From Wilderness Protection to Climate Justice. Here, with luck, I met an incredible preceptor who shed some light on the interdisciplinary nature of her research and inspired me to delve deeper into my own multifaceted interests.

A PhD candidate student in the Geosciences department, Gemma M. Sahwell is currently a member of both the Blue Lab and the Higgins Research Laboratory. Curious, I reached out to her to see if I could speak with her a bit about her research.

Join me below to hear about her experience.

Seasonal Series: Interview with Bjarke Nielsen, EEB/HMEI

Posted on April 26, 2024April 7, 2025 by Xander Jenkin

Bjarke Frost Nielsen, from Denmark, received his PhD in Physics from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and is currently a Carlsberg Foundation Research Fellow Postdoctoral Researcher at Princeton in the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI) within the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) department. He currently works on using mathematical and computational tools to solve problems in pathogen evolution and infectious disease epidemiology.

Following the seasonal series theme of “Niche vs. Expansive Research Topics”, I interviewed Dr. Bjarke Frost Nielsen on his journey going from a Physics PhD to working in our EEB department and all of the different topics he’s worked on along the way.

Dr. Nielsen shares, “In general, I have a very broad notion of what physics is. I don’t think for something to qualify as physics it has to, you know, involve Newton’s 2nd Law, be describable in terms of the Schrödinger Equation, or something like that. I think that physics is essentially the science that tries to mathematically tackle the aspects of our physical world that can be attacked mathematically. That’s more or less what physics is, right? It’s choosing the areas where you think that a mathematical description can really capture the problem. … It’s a very broad science in that way.”

Read on to learn more about Dr. Nielsen’s reflections on his research background in Physics and current work in EEB.

Journeying through Statistics & Machine Learning Research: An Interview with Jake Snell

Posted on April 24, 2024April 7, 2025 by Alexis Wu

Jake Snell is a DataX postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University, where he develops novel deep learning algorithms by drawing insights from probabilistic models. He is currently serving as a lecturer for SML 310: Research Projects in Data Science.

As I dive deeper into my computer science coursework, I’ve found myself engaging increasingly with statistics and machine learning (hereafter abbreviated as SML). Opportunities to conduct SML research are abound at Princeton: senior theses, junior independent work, research-based courses such as SML 310: Research Projects in Data Science, joining research labs, and much more. There is such a wide variety of research opportunities, and so many nuanced pathways that students can take while exploring SML research. So, for this seasonal series, I wanted to speak with professors and researchers who are more advanced in their research journeys to share their insight and advice to undergraduate students.

Seasonal Series: An Interview with Eric Ahn

Posted on April 19, 2024May 9, 2024 by Shannon Yeow

Eric Ahn ’24, from Suwanee, Georgia, is an Operations Research and Financial Engineering (ORFE) major at Princeton University. Ahn is the Class of 2024 Treasurer, as well as a member of Manna Christian Fellowship and Kindred Spirit. This coming summer, Ahn will work as a Trading Intern at IMC Trading before returning to Princeton in the fall to obtain a graduate degree in finance.

In the spirit of upcoming senior thesis deadlines, I wanted to interview a senior currently working on their thesis. As an underclassman that doesn’t have to worry about any form of independent work yet and a COS BSE major, one of the only majors exempt from the senior thesis requirement, I’ve always been curious about the thesis writing process and what a BSE senior thesis entails. As a part of our Seasonal Series, I am excited to present my interview with Eric, as he shares his ORFE senior thesis, his interest in finance, and his advice for rising seniors.

Reflection on my personal experience tackling a new research paradigm

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