Undergraduate Research

Gaining hands-on research experience is an important part of the bioengineering education. By the end of their Berkeley career, most BioE seniors have done extracurricular research, which could mean:

  • Worked on a research project in a Berkeley faculty laboratory,
  • Worked on a research project with a team of students, probably supervised by a professor or staff researcher, such as through iGEM, CalSol, etc.,
  • Continued a project begun during a class, to make significant progress after the end of the semester,
  • Did a school-year or summer research internship at another college or institution,
  • Did a research-focused summer internship in industry.

We think research is an invaluable experience for engineers. One of the most common ways students get this experience is through work in a faculty laboratory, usually for multiple semesters or years.

photo of one undergraduate explaining his research poster to another

Benefits of Research

  • You will learn different things, in a different way than in the classroom.
  • You'll grow a network of awesome people.
  • You'll be on the cutting edge of developments not even published yet.
  • You may get to co-author a paper and/or present your research.
  • You'll be more attractive to jobs and grad schools with hands-on experience.
  • All research experience is transferrable: what you learn about the research process in a wet lab will apply to a hardware lab or a computational lab.
  • It can be fun!
  • You'll realize that you're not just a student studying science, you're a scientist.

Before you plan How, think about Why. What is your GOAL in doing research?

  • Learn what it's like to do research so I can plan my career
  • Demonstrate how I can apply my education to hands-on problems
  • Make an impact and do some real science
  • Fulfill that design requirement (may be best to take a project course)
  • I don't know, everyone told me I need to (see an adviser and talk about your career plans)

Publishing and Presenting Your Work

Publishing or presenting your work is one of the best outcomes of doing extracurricular research, if you've make a significant contribution to a project. Having a publication or poster looks fantastic on your resumes and applications. Note - always get approval from your faculty mentor before publishing or presenting any research done in their lab.

Some options:

  1. Make a research poster and present it at one of the College of Engineering, campuswide, or iGEM (CUBS) undergraduate poster sessions
  2. Apply to present your poster at a scientific conference - maybe jointly with graduate student mentors?
  3. Apply to present your conference at a local or undergraduate conference, such as the UC Bioengineering Institute of California conference each summer, the SACNAS NDiSTEM, or the National Council on Undergraduate Research.
  4. Publish your research in an student journal, like the Berkeley Scientific Journal.
  5. Talk with your research mentor about being listed as an author on one of your lab projects when the work is published in a journal.