Neuronline Spotlight: A Look at the Life of an Undergraduate Researcher

Three promising young scientists share their experiences navigating scholarship opportunities, balancing lab work with classes and extracurricular activities, and pursuing their research passions in this Undergraduate Research Story series.

Read the profiles of three undergraduate SfN members who won this year’s prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for sophomores and juniors in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering.

“Find a good mentor who answers your questions and engages you in the process. Research is a collaborative activity, and mentorship is a key part of learning how to be a good scientist and peer,” advised Kimberly Bress, a senior at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

“I do homework and study while waiting for experiments to run, and when I am outside of the lab, I am reading papers and thinking of new and better experiments to try,” said Duy Phan, a senior at Johns Hopkins University.

“As a student, classes tend to be my primary concern, so I sometimes feel as though I’m not working on research as much as I would like. My attempt to solve this is to set aside time as early in the day as I can for research so it doesn’t get pushed aside by my other commitments. I try to figure out what is most important to me and schedule around that,” noted Chenguang Li, a senior at Dartmouth College.