research process

Publications, Conferences, and Professional Development: Motivations for Your R3

Posted on November 16, 2022November 14, 2022 by Amaya Dressler

*Research Correspondent, Amaya Dressler ’25, presenting her Writing Seminar R3 research at the Mary George Research Conference.*

Writing sem. For many, it’s one of the most challenging courses they’ll ever take at Princeton. It forces you to think in new and challenging ways, often questioning some of the ‘basic rules’ we’d previously been taught about writing. With late nights spent drafting and redrafting, 8:30 am classes, and daunting essay prompts, it’s easy to understand how writing sem (short for writing seminar) gets its reputation. No student makes it out of writing sem with three perfect papers. Yet, in the midst of challenge, it’s easy to lose sight of the many professional opportunities that writing sem can offer. Whether you’re looking to get published, nail your next job interview, or just make a little extra cash, here are four ways that any student can make the most of their writing sem experience.

The Creation of TigerResearch: An Interview with Vivek Kolli ’24

Posted on November 7, 2022November 7, 2022 by Alexis Wu

Vivek Kolli ’24 is Vice Chair of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Director of Marketing and Outreach for Scholars of Finance.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Vivek Kolli ‘24, a junior in the Operations Research and Financial Engineering (ORFE) department. Vivek is one of the three developers for TigerResearch, a comprehensive platform that allows for students to easily navigate through their database of Princeton professors and their research areas. In our interview*, we discuss his vision for the platform, the importance of entrepreneurial ideas in driving the research process, and advice for students who would like to get involved with research at Princeton.

Tips for Talking About Your Research

Posted on November 4, 2022November 1, 2022 by Kate Weseley-Jones

Sharing the discoveries you’ve made is not just extremely rewarding, but a necessary part of the research process because it ensures your findings can be put to use. Writing about your research is a tough obstacle to tackle in and of itself, but what I want to focus on today is the arguably more intimidating half of sharing your research: speaking about it. Both formats require demonstrating your command of the subject while also being engaging. Unlike writing about your research, where you generally have a well-defined goal from the get-go, you will find yourself speaking about your research in an enormous range of contexts. Here are three of my tips for talking about your research, whether summarizing your findings for your grandma or giving a formal presentation to a group of experts.

A woman giving a presentation — *A presentation given in Princeton’s beautiful J-Street Library.*

A Figure Speaks a Thousand Words

Posted on October 3, 2022October 3, 2022 by Amaya Dressler

Example boxplot titled Boxplot of Magnesium, Ashwaganda, and Melatonin with Deep Sleep. The boxplot analysis indicates statistically insignificant variations among supplement types. The author describes the follow-up question after their ANOVA analysis: how does my sleep vary with a magnesium pill vs. without a magnesium pill? — The boxplot comparison accurately reflects the variation between different sleep supplements and their effect on deep sleep quantity. As seen above, the boxplot demonstrates the presence of a single outlier under the Magnesium group which could have easily skewed and misrepresented the data in another type of figure.

As anyone who has taken one of Princeton’s introductory statistics courses can tell you: informative statistics and figures can and will be incredibly useful in supporting your research. Whether you’re reworking your R1, writing your first JP, or in the final stages of your Senior Thesis, chances are you’ve integrated some useful statistics into your argument. When there are a million different positions that one can take in an argument, statistics appear to be our research’s objective grounding. The data says so, therefore I must be right. Right?

Writing Seminar: Growing as a Researcher, Writer, and Person

Posted on September 30, 2022October 3, 2022 by Alexis Wu

Reflecting on my first year, I think about how quickly time flies. I’ve thought about how much I’ve changed over the course of a year and how my discussions with my peers and professors already began to shape the way I viewed the world. As an engineering student, Writing Seminar was especially memorable because it opened the door for me to engage with research in the humanities.

All first-year students are required to take a Writing Seminar. My seminar, WRI146 – Constructing the Past, taught by Dr. Emma Ljung, centered on the theme of how the past is closely intertwined with the present. In retrospect, one of my most pivotal periods in the course was the process of writing my R2, which focused on artifacts from the Princeton University Art Museum. Interested in delving deeper into my Chinese cultural background, I chose to work with the Guang, a dragon-headed bronze pouring vessel from the late Shang dynasty.

Image of the Princeton University Art Museum Guang

Pouring vessel with dragon-head lid (guang), China, Western Zhou dynasty, 11th century to 771 BC, bronze from the Princeton University Art Museum. Photo from Daderot on Wikimedia Commons.

Conversations over Lunch: The Research You’ve Started Without Even Realizing

Posted on September 28, 2022September 28, 2022 by Kate Weseley-Jones

There’s nothing very special about the statement that lunch is fun – who doesn’t enjoy it? What I’ve found more surprising is that even with all the thought provoking classes I’ve taken at Princeton, lunch is consistently one of the most interesting parts of my day. Whether relaying key points from a particularly great morning lecture, talking about our new favorite YouTube video, or filling each other in about weekend plans, my friends and I use lunch as a chance to share our latest finds. What I recently began to consider is that this universal desire to start a conversation around our latest discoveries sits at the core of the research process.

Image with a sun flare in the front of Forbes College. — *On this particular day, Hiba and I had lunch at Forbes.*

From Law to Coding: Writing my SPIA Quantitative Junior Paper

Posted on September 23, 2022September 23, 2022 by Ryan Champeau

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.

Failure: Science’s Beauty and the Beast

Posted on September 21, 2022September 21, 2022 by Mahya Fazel-Zarandi

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.

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

Posted on April 15, 2022April 12, 2022 by Agnes Robang

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.

Lessons from Junior Independent Work in MAE

Posted on March 1, 2022February 28, 2022 by Agnes Robang

In the fall of 2021, I worked in the Computational Turbulent Reacting Flow Laboratory under the guidance of Professor Michael Mueller. In the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) department, junior independent research is optional. I enrolled in MAE339: Junior Independent Work in the fall and am currently continuing my research this spring semester. Research was an integral part of my high school experience, and I was excited to start working on independent research in my junior year of college in a different setting. Now, I want to share a few of the lessons I learned from this past semester with you:

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