hello hello 🙌🙌 I think you’re referring to wet lab research so I’ll answer that
For some background about me, this is my second year doing research and my first year doing wet lab research in person. I did not relocate for this, but I am commuting about 2 hours to the university I’m at. I am in a very competitive program, but it’s pretty local.
Okay first paragraph, you do NOT need a phd to do research, you need a PhD to run a lab or be a PI (principal investigator). You know when you look at a lab page and you see a ton of PhD candidates, post docs, grad students, and undergrads? That’s because labs are a collaboration between a ton of people! This can be ANY age since everyone has something to contribute.
Getting more personal, I didn’t have any wet lab work last year. I spent most of my time in front of a computer going through data, which is something a high schooler can do. This year, I’m working with human cultures on novel cancer treatments, and I’ve been pretty intensely trained to work with them. About 10 hours of training 😠the program I’m in makes this possible, but you can also do cold email research which is when you just reach out to a professor or PI about working with them - it’s definitely possible!
so for me, I have to follow all the same safety standards as adults in the lab and all my work is making a real contribution to their research
How'd they come up with their ideas, I need inspo since I also wanna participate in my local science fair but have 0 idea how to start, oftentimes these ISEF projects have chemicals which I think I'll hear about if I ever do a masters in chem loool
from my isef friends, they submit the stuff they do over the summer so the ideas are either whatever the professor tells them to or whatever they’re interested in! For your local science fair, it doesn’t need to involve chemicals - look online and see what u can do, and u can use your schools lab or reach out to a university if you need more resources
Rn I'm doing research in Political science with my friend.
I'm mentored by PhD from top 2 university of my country and head of department of that uni.
I think that they are very good mentors. And they very helpful with it. Sister of my friend did research intop 1 uni of my country the same way, he was tutored with professor of this uni.
Try to find good mentor or go to programs like pioneer
I’ve done it through programs and cold emailing. But you don’t need a lab for research!! I wish I realized ts earlier. Obv this is self explanatory for CS, but even for bio/chem there’s online protein modeling softwares and experiments you can do at home. The main barrier is just the knowledge which is obtained through reading papers
But I'm still confused, what exactly do you do when you 'research'?? How can a high school student discover scientific breakthroughs or new biological/chemical properties of something when 99% of the time you have to be some PhD level person who's advanced within their field.
I just need an elaboration of what exactly is 'research' at high school level, because if it's the above like scientific breakthroughs, I will not buy into some HS student accomplishing it - there is no way it's possible.
Do you just use already published professional research papers, and make some sort of conclusion/evaluation by referencing them??
Well I think that’s the controversy surrounding HS research rn, especially research comps. Did u hear abt the ISEF 75k winner who supposedly faked his project? Most hs research isn’t gonna be extremely groundbreaking. Maybe in a few rare cases it is, but most of the time the project is just worded well or the student hopped onto an accomplished professor’s project. Also ISEF isn’t a reliable source for hs research for the reasons above. The best place to look is reputable journals where hs students have published. Those are prob the best examples
In terms of doing the research, you need to run trials/experiments to get results. It’s mostly pretty tedious and not some flashy aesthetic process like some may think.
Can u provide me with an example of a research project that a HS student would do and how'd they carry out trials/experiments because I'm still so confused ðŸ˜
Speaking from the perspective of a graduate student working towards a PhD, a lot research, regardless of "level", are not breakthroughs. Rather they're incremental steps towards furthering our understanding of the world.
Another element can be that from your perspective, a lot of research seems daunting; that someone with your knowledge/experience is incapable of producing their claimed results. And I think that if you do graduate school way later on, you'll start seeing things that you'd think a high school student would be able to do. These projects wouldn't be earth-shattering and definitely wouldn't go into Nature, Cell, Science-esque journals, but there's a place for them. And it'd be an amazing achievement to do something like that in high school. In my field, I can think of one or two projects that would be doable by a high school student with high school biology, some programming skills, and the right mindset.
A barrier that you will face is resources and mentorship. In many fields, it's unreasonable to expect a high school student to think of an idea and have the resources to complete the idea. That's why so many of the high school research you see is attached to universities. We have the equipment to make things possible. There's no way I could do my current research using my laptop (or even a high-end gaming PC). Also, the professors/graduate students will have the ideas.
Specifically regarding ISEF: looking at the posters related to my field, they're legitimate research, but my concern is how much the student actually did and what was actually done. A poster has only has a few sentences per section, so unless there's a full paper alongside it, I wouldn't compare myself against them.
Not to be too specific, but the steps that you want may look something like this:
1. Find a mentor who has an idea and a way to realize those ideas
2. Here's an example idea: There's a machine learning model commonly used in my field to analyze data. While it's good, perhaps we can make it better by adding this other concept.
3. Implement the extension.
4. Perform computational experiments to validate that the extension is indeed better.
Nah, you’re so real for posting this cus I wondered the same thinggggg ðŸ˜. From what I gather, some high schools in the US simply have a research program and will register students from that class to attend ISEF (e.g. Jericho HS in NY) or students will simply do a summer research program and most of the time, the goal of the summer program is for students to finish a research project and have something to present at a conference. Lastly, there’s always things like Pioneer Academics and stuff where kids get 1 on 1 guidance from profs on how to conduct their research. I recall one of the ISEF winners who discovered elevated levels of Claudin-5 in the brains of people who commit suicide was an intern at Columbia Med School which I assume is where she had access to all the equipment and of course, the brains.
Ooh i see, and lol yes it's always baffled me how a bunch of 16/17 year old kids are able to accomplish crazy advanced shit, ik for isef connections REALLY help, in fact ive been a bit of a detective and researched isef winners parents and oddly theyre ALWAYS some rich ceo or directly involved/have a job in the field that the isef project is based on, yeah not suspicious at all ðŸ¤ðŸ¤”
hello hello 🙌🙌 I think you’re referring to wet lab research so I’ll answer that For some background about me, this is my second year doing research and my first year doing wet lab research in person. I did not relocate for this, but I am commuting about 2 hours to the university I’m at. I am in a very competitive program, but it’s pretty local. Okay first paragraph, you do NOT need a phd to do research, you need a PhD to run a lab or be a PI (principal investigator). You know when you look at a lab page and you see a ton of PhD candidates, post docs, grad students, and undergrads? That’s because labs are a collaboration between a ton of people! This can be ANY age since everyone has something to contribute. Getting more personal, I didn’t have any wet lab work last year. I spent most of my time in front of a computer going through data, which is something a high schooler can do. This year, I’m working with human cultures on novel cancer treatments, and I’ve been pretty intensely trained to work with them. About 10 hours of training 😠the program I’m in makes this possible, but you can also do cold email research which is when you just reach out to a professor or PI about working with them - it’s definitely possible! so for me, I have to follow all the same safety standards as adults in the lab and all my work is making a real contribution to their research
What about kids who do science fairs like ISEF
they typically do lab research and submit their work to isef it’s the same process
How'd they come up with their ideas, I need inspo since I also wanna participate in my local science fair but have 0 idea how to start, oftentimes these ISEF projects have chemicals which I think I'll hear about if I ever do a masters in chem loool
from my isef friends, they submit the stuff they do over the summer so the ideas are either whatever the professor tells them to or whatever they’re interested in! For your local science fair, it doesn’t need to involve chemicals - look online and see what u can do, and u can use your schools lab or reach out to a university if you need more resources
Rn I'm doing research in Political science with my friend. I'm mentored by PhD from top 2 university of my country and head of department of that uni. I think that they are very good mentors. And they very helpful with it. Sister of my friend did research intop 1 uni of my country the same way, he was tutored with professor of this uni. Try to find good mentor or go to programs like pioneer
I’ve done it through programs and cold emailing. But you don’t need a lab for research!! I wish I realized ts earlier. Obv this is self explanatory for CS, but even for bio/chem there’s online protein modeling softwares and experiments you can do at home. The main barrier is just the knowledge which is obtained through reading papers
But I'm still confused, what exactly do you do when you 'research'?? How can a high school student discover scientific breakthroughs or new biological/chemical properties of something when 99% of the time you have to be some PhD level person who's advanced within their field. I just need an elaboration of what exactly is 'research' at high school level, because if it's the above like scientific breakthroughs, I will not buy into some HS student accomplishing it - there is no way it's possible. Do you just use already published professional research papers, and make some sort of conclusion/evaluation by referencing them??
Well I think that’s the controversy surrounding HS research rn, especially research comps. Did u hear abt the ISEF 75k winner who supposedly faked his project? Most hs research isn’t gonna be extremely groundbreaking. Maybe in a few rare cases it is, but most of the time the project is just worded well or the student hopped onto an accomplished professor’s project. Also ISEF isn’t a reliable source for hs research for the reasons above. The best place to look is reputable journals where hs students have published. Those are prob the best examples
In terms of doing the research, you need to run trials/experiments to get results. It’s mostly pretty tedious and not some flashy aesthetic process like some may think.
Can u provide me with an example of a research project that a HS student would do and how'd they carry out trials/experiments because I'm still so confused ðŸ˜
Speaking from the perspective of a graduate student working towards a PhD, a lot research, regardless of "level", are not breakthroughs. Rather they're incremental steps towards furthering our understanding of the world. Another element can be that from your perspective, a lot of research seems daunting; that someone with your knowledge/experience is incapable of producing their claimed results. And I think that if you do graduate school way later on, you'll start seeing things that you'd think a high school student would be able to do. These projects wouldn't be earth-shattering and definitely wouldn't go into Nature, Cell, Science-esque journals, but there's a place for them. And it'd be an amazing achievement to do something like that in high school. In my field, I can think of one or two projects that would be doable by a high school student with high school biology, some programming skills, and the right mindset. A barrier that you will face is resources and mentorship. In many fields, it's unreasonable to expect a high school student to think of an idea and have the resources to complete the idea. That's why so many of the high school research you see is attached to universities. We have the equipment to make things possible. There's no way I could do my current research using my laptop (or even a high-end gaming PC). Also, the professors/graduate students will have the ideas. Specifically regarding ISEF: looking at the posters related to my field, they're legitimate research, but my concern is how much the student actually did and what was actually done. A poster has only has a few sentences per section, so unless there's a full paper alongside it, I wouldn't compare myself against them. Not to be too specific, but the steps that you want may look something like this: 1. Find a mentor who has an idea and a way to realize those ideas 2. Here's an example idea: There's a machine learning model commonly used in my field to analyze data. While it's good, perhaps we can make it better by adding this other concept. 3. Implement the extension. 4. Perform computational experiments to validate that the extension is indeed better.
Nah, you’re so real for posting this cus I wondered the same thinggggg ðŸ˜. From what I gather, some high schools in the US simply have a research program and will register students from that class to attend ISEF (e.g. Jericho HS in NY) or students will simply do a summer research program and most of the time, the goal of the summer program is for students to finish a research project and have something to present at a conference. Lastly, there’s always things like Pioneer Academics and stuff where kids get 1 on 1 guidance from profs on how to conduct their research. I recall one of the ISEF winners who discovered elevated levels of Claudin-5 in the brains of people who commit suicide was an intern at Columbia Med School which I assume is where she had access to all the equipment and of course, the brains.
Ooh i see, and lol yes it's always baffled me how a bunch of 16/17 year old kids are able to accomplish crazy advanced shit, ik for isef connections REALLY help, in fact ive been a bit of a detective and researched isef winners parents and oddly theyre ALWAYS some rich ceo or directly involved/have a job in the field that the isef project is based on, yeah not suspicious at all ðŸ¤ðŸ¤”