Post Goal

I remember during undergrad visit days (damn that was around 5 years ago now) the tour guids would always say “undergraduate research is so easy to get here, there are so many undergrads doing research, we are on of the top undergrad research universities …”. Based on this alone, I thought it would be pretty easy for me to get an undergraduate research position at UW-Madison in Computer Engineering or Computer Science. Nope! Exact opposite. I’m not sure if it is just hard for CE/CS or in general at UW but what the tour guides said could not be further from the truh. I had to figure out the hard way how to get a research gig. So the goal of this post is to hopefully make it easier for you to get undergraduate research.

Why Research

Finding research as an undergrad can be a difficult, and providing value to a research lab while being a full time undergraduate student can be even tougher. Both tasks require one thing: a clear and specific why statement. Why do you want to do research as an undergraduate? After all, you are taking anywhere from 3-5 classes, part of student orgs on campus, recruiting for internships, and hopefully trying to have some time for yourself to eat, exercise, and enjoy college. Why take on another time-consuming responsibility?

If you don’t have a clear reason why you want to do research, I wouldn’t recommend trying it out in the first place. There are plenty of other things you can do with your time that can provide you the same or even more satisfaction. That being said, your why statement doesn’t need to be “I want to get a Ph.D. and become a professor”. At least, mine definitely wasn’t. After talking with various undergrads at UW-Madison, I realized there are three different themes for why students want to do undergraduate research:

  1. You absolutley know you want to go to grad school. If this describes you, I’d consider you to be a pretty rare undergraduate.
  2. You’ve been thinking about going to grad school, but you’re not sure if it’s for you and if you’ll like it. This potential interest you have emanates from a particular class you really enjoyed. You hope to make a decision about grad school after participating in undergraduate research. I’d say most undergrads fall under this bucket.
  3. You want to do something as an undergrad that will be reputable for your resume. This is pretty common, especifically for younger undergrads who struggle to find internships immediately with little previous experience.

All three are worthy reasons to pursue your research career as an undergrad. Personally, before starting my research career, I fell under the second bucket. I genuinely enjoyed learning the material in my classes and quickly realized that if I want to put the pieces together and learn even more, I might want to go to grad school. But I wasn’t sure if I should do a Masters or Ph.D. I could continue learning and probably put most of the pieces together with a 2 years research based masters, but I just wasn’t sure if that would be enough to satisfy my interests. That’s why I wanted to do undergraduate research: to determine if I enjoy research and if I’m capable of doing research in a full Ph.D. setting.

7 Step Process for Finding Research

Below I’ve provided a detailed 7-step process to hopefully get your first undergraduate research experience. I wish I would’ve had this when I was looking for research opportunities, as I struggled to find any tangible advice online. Just a note that I hadn’t written this process out before or even while attempting to find research. But looking back, I ended up following these steps in the order presented, which ultimately led to a couple different research positions and projects over the 1.5 years.

  1. Write out why you’re considering undergrad research - read above
  2. Narrow in on a specific niche within the field you’re interested in. For example, there are so many different areas of computer engineering and computer science. Are you interested in software engineering, computer architecture, big data, machine learning, robotics, embedded systems, HPC systems? You don’t need to have a very a specific field, but narrow the scope a bit.
  3. Clearly write out WHY you’re interested in that field. Did you enjoy a particular class? What about the class did you enjoy? Did you read a book, article, paper? Are you excited with the potential the field has (and if so, what resources have you used to determine what that potential may be)? This is extremely important because it makes you seem credible when approaching professors (after all, they don’t want to hold your hand and waste their time on someone who doesn’t do their homework).
  4. Start learning about the work of various professors at your university. I’d suggest having a very systamatic approach and using a spreadsheet to organize your notes:
    • Get a overarching view of who all the different professors are that are ACTIVELY conducting research in your area of interest and write this down (in a spreadsheet). I specify actively because some professors (especially those on tenure or emaratus) don’t output as much work anymore. If they haven’t published a research paper in the last 3-4 years, they probably aren’t doing research for the time being.
    • Each day, choose one professor to dive deeper into. Check out their group (to determine if you know anyone in the group, maybe a former TA) and write down names in your spreadsheet. Write a TLDR (too long don’t read) statement about their research areas and find 2-3 papers of theirs that may be interesting to read. Save a link to the papers in your spreadsheet. Also look into active research projects of theirs (typically a research project might have a website associated with it that dives deeper into the specifics). In this step, you don’t have to actually read the paper or dive into the details of the research project.
    • Now it’s time for the grunt work. You compiled a list of active professors with their papers and projects. All that’s left is to actually read the paper and look into the project. As an undergrad with no experience, this can be daunting. Luckily, you don’t actually have to read or understand the entire paper (but of course, go ahead if you want to). It is sufficient to read the abstract, introduction, methodology, and conclusion. Write down notes about what you read and insightful questions you have about the paper. For research projects, if there is code, try to build it and get it running. If there are tutorials, run through the tutorials yourself. All this effort will be valuable down the line, as it shows you care about their work and have intiative and courage to dive into a field that you know nothing and figure things out. Make sure to write down questions that are insightful, and not just “What does x mean?”. This is surprisingly difficult to do when you don’t understand anything, but take it slow, google vocab and key concepts you don’t know, and you should be able to write down meaningful questions to ask.
  5. All that’s left before reaching out to professors is putting together what I call a Summary Sheet of yourself. I first got this idea from a PDF put together by a professor at Carnegie Mellon University (make sure to read this if you’re considering going to grad school, it is super helpful). In the summary sheet, you want to include a research objective, list of relevant coursework, and prior experience. The research objective should be a 2-3 sentence statement describing what you’re interested in researching and why. For coursework, make sure it is relevant to the research (don’t include economics if you’re interested in researching about operating systems). Furthermore, include the semester you took it, the professor you had, and the letter grade (hopefully you did well) you received. Finally, for prior experience, it’s basically the same format as a normal resume. In particular, highlight the relevant technologies you have skill in. Highlight past internships and personal projects. Here’s my summary sheet that got me two opportunities with two different research groups!
  6. At this point, you’re probably 95% ahead of the rest of the undergrads attempting to find research. You’ve actually done a lot of homework before approaching a professor and concolidated your skills that you bring to the table, so great job! All that’s left now is to actually reach out to the professors.
    • There is only one approach that I think is worth pursuing: face-to-face (either in person or via Zoom). DON’T write an email asking for a research position right away! However, in order to get face-to-face with the professor, you still need to send an email. In the email, make sure to ask if they have 15-20 minutes to meet with you or if you can join their office hours to discuss their work. Underscore your intrigue for their research, that you read a few of their papers (include the name of the papers), and that you have some questions you would like to ask them so that you can learn more.
    • Hopefully, the professor responds and you can get a meeting with them. If you do, have your research summary handy, but more importantly go in with the mindset of learning. Ask your questions, show curiosity, and have an actual conversation with the professor. Hopefully both of you vibe. I wouldn’t ask them for a undergrad research opportunity in that meeting. You just want to make a good impression.
    • Next, take their answers, and read the papers again. See if you understand more of their work and if you can come up with even more insightful questions. Then, email them again, this time asking your questions directly in the email. Hopefully they’ll respond within the email itself. If all this goes well, then it’s time to finally make the ask.
    • Send a separate email (with a proper subject) asking for an opportunity to do undergraduate research under their advisement. Emphasize how interested you are in their research (and they probably know this by now considering you asked them so many questions and read through their paper twice or thrice). Even though you have your summary sheet (which you should attach in this email), make sure to also mention your qualifications in the email itself (keep this brief, 2-3 sentences max).
  7. At this point, you should be proud of yourself for getting this far. Now, it’s simply a numbers game. Professors are so busy some just stop responding, some don’t even respond to begin with, some flat out say they don’t have the time to invest with you. Don’t take this personally, just keep trying other professors that you wrote down in your spreadsheet. Eventually something will pan out!

More Tips

  • Consider taking a summer to do an REU (Research Experience for Undergrads) or UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program). These are basically payed research positions under faculty for the entirety of a summer. Different universities have different programs they offer to students. This could be a great way to travel and check out a different campus. Usually you’ll receive a decent stipend for the summer (I received $8000 for my REU).
  • Create personal relationships with your professors. If you’re enjoying a course you’re taking and are doing well in it, try to go to the professor’s office hours to build a relationship with them. Then, after the semester, reach out to them (probably via email) asking if they have any opportunities in their group to do the type of work you did in their class or if they know of anyone that could use a new set of eyes (I’m sure they do)!
  • Get to know a TA and reach out to them about their research. This is actually how I got my gig in Professor Matt Sinclair and Professor Shivaram Venkataraman’s group. I reached out to a TA that respected me because I went to their office hours multiple times in the semester and asked insightful questions. Then, after the semester ended, I asked them about their research and if their advisor(s) has(have) any potential openings for undergraduates.
  • Don’t expect to be payed. In fact, you shouldn’t even care about it. The whole point of doing research during your undergrad is to satisfy your why statement. If that truly happens, then you should be good without the money. Don’t even mention it when talking to the professors! If they have funding and would want to offer it to you, they will let you know!

Final Comments

Hopefully this process and these tips are helpful for you in creating your research path. I remember I struggled for over 1.5 years trying to find research and I had to figure this all out on my own. But this was the exact process I took and it ended up working out great. Please reach out if you need any help, I’m more than happy to! Also, let me know if you found this process and these tips useful and how it goes. Good luck 🙂!