A beginner’s guide to getting a research internship

You might even get to play with lasers


Orange may be the new black, but research is the new…job. Research internships are great ways for students to do something original and unprecedented. Research shows problem-solving skill, and any future job’s hiring official will dig it. If that’s not enough, research is an excuse to spend a summer at college studying something you enjoy without any extra classes to distract you. They’re competitive though, and professors can be hard to please. Luckily, you’re not alone on this one.

Find a method you wouldn’t mind doing 1000 times

Unfortunately, research interns rarely start off with original research. The real research intern starts off doing the grunt work in the lab. I worked in a bio lab that was hot on nanoparticle science—something that I wanted to get into. Instead, I was preparing gels and pipetting chemicals from one plastic cup to another (it’s more unglamorous than it sounds). Learning from that experience, any research intern who wants to get into a field should research the methods involved. When you’re looking through your options for with whom you want to work, find a lab or topic where the methodology is as interesting as can be. Need an example? My friend here found a lab where the only grunt work was playing with lasers, and got to work on his passion in materials science. He knew he wanted this field and went into a lab where the work at every level was something interesting and worthwhile!

What’s your goal? The ultimate multiple choice question

With research internships, getting measurable results is mission critical! Luckily, there are really three metrics for success. Every professor I’ve spoken to has told me that their most successful interns walk in knowing that they want to (a) conduct experiments on specific topic they’ve figured out, (b) discover something that impacts a specific problem, (c) hustle and churn out a paper on (anything) to give their careers oomph.

Exploring through research isn’t usually enough—ask Jack Andraka, winner of the high school Intel Science and Engineering Fair. If a professor is willing to hire a high schooler off this tip, it ought to communicate to students and professionals alike. For me, research was a way to solve a problem I’d always been passionate about, and my professors were hooked with the fact that their labs could solve the problems of ordinary people. Below you can see me rocking a HAZMAT suit trying to use my professor’s lab’s resources to make solar cells which worked in the rain.

Read up on your professor(s) of choice

People say that when you’re selling something, you speak the language of the guy who’s buying. Research internships are no different—read the papers of the professor(s) you want to work for, learn their “language.” Focus on finding details like specific methodologies or peculiar results that you can ask questions about (e.g., details like “this coefficient remains unexplained” are easy to ask about in your first interview or in the cold-call e-mail). Try to brainstorm one or two ways you can fit into the methodology of their more recent research so you can show them how you fit in. These boilers below are from one of the labs I worked in, and I told the professor in my first meeting with her that I believed a new chemical could be processed in the same way that she had mentioned might speed up the process in her paper that year. She already had the idea herself, but it excited her to know I was thinking about it.

Hit ‘em up!

How do you get the job? Rapid-fire short e-mails  for all of the professors on your hit list should do the trick. Few labs are interested in formal internship programs, especially at universities. You’ll need to do some cold calling or cold e-mailing. Stalk their online profiles at their respective institution, you can easily find an e-mail if not a phone number as well. E-mail them and be sure to include the information that you read up about, closing with what you’re interested in researching and your long-term goals. Try not to make it too fluffy—professors always have too many e-mails in their inboxes. If they don’t respond within 2 days, feel free to follow up. In the e-mail below, I try to subtly mention the reason I want to work with this professor (the review paper) so I can bring it up in further discussion. Knowing his lab, I tried to give him quick facts about my experience as well.

Get hungry

Treat your interview like you’re interviewing your professor. You’ve got to be hungry for knowledge. Every time that professor says something interesting, be sure to ask a question that keeps the conversation going. Oftentimes, professors want a person who can encourage them to question things from their most basic level. As a result, interns are really valuable. Complex research problems can often be reframed as simple explanations. If you can ask a question, you can generally expect that the professor will appreciate it. There’s no one characteristic that professors all want in an intern, except a hunger for knowledge and a willingness to learn (cheesy, I know).

Below you can see me and friends during a tour of one professor’s facility for the first time (I will not apologize for the face). The reason I think this professor ended up hiring me was because I was willing to ask questions about each piece of equipment and even proposed an alternate way of using this particular facemask during on procedure he was demonstrating so that it was less of a hindrance. It’s the small stuff!

Take notes

This one may be more about the job than getting it, but it’s really important. I’ve had some crazy mishaps in lab, and being one of the least experienced lab members can make those situations difficult.

Taking copious notes about exactly what is happening when a professor or other technician in the lab shows you a process can prevent these mistakes, and you can also use these as tangible products to give to your professor. I made what my overseeing professor called a “Standard Operating Procedure” out of my notes for using one machine, and when that machine literally blew up when I was in the room, he knew it wasn’t me that did it (two birds, one stone). Notes save jobs, but they also give you a leg up in the research world. I even used Word to make the least attractive diagram possible of the machine:

Research offers some great opportunities for expanding your horizons and building your resume. These tricks will help you get the internship you want and make a lifelong friend in the professor or head researcher who mentors you.