Finding the Right Research Lab as an Undergraduate
Choosing a research lab as an undergraduate, particularly for students who want to seriously explore scientific research and/or pursue a PhD, MD, or MD/PhD, is a significant decision with major implications for scientific training and career trajectory. This can be the highlight of your undergraduate training, it can bring your science/pre-med courses to life in beautiful ways, and it can help you make enormous strides in ways that unlock your dreams (as it did for me). It could also be a nightmare, destroy your confidence, and destabilize your journey. Many factors, both visible and hidden, can affect your experience and success in a research lab, yet I believe most are not sufficiently defined/discussed at the undergraduate level. The goal of this post is to help make factors important for choosing an undergraduate research lab more accessible/transparent to students, discuss how these factors may shape your training, and emphasize that yes although you are relatively early in your training, you of course deserve the same respect and support that every single other person does, regardless of their degrees/achievements, and this is absolutely what you should expect out of any research environment you consider. The 25 variables I describe are intended to be a toolbox that gets the gears turning rather than a prescribed set of instructions, as ultimately it is your own preferences and goals that will help you make the right decision.
Summary Figure: Toolbox of Factors for Finding an Undergraduate Research Lab
Find a lab where you are supported as a person and scientist in the ways you need. Go with your heart.
PI’s Personality
The PI’s personality very often sets the tone of the entire lab.
Does PI care about the people in their lab?
Are they someone who will care about your success?
If the PI isn’t friendly to you as someone outside the lab, imagine how they behave to people in their lab that they have power over. (red flag)
If the PI gives any indication that they see undergrads as a waste of time, this is a red flag.
Can you trust and work well with this person who will likely have a significant influence on your undergraduate research training and your next steps?
PI’s Training
PI’s training background and its overlap with your own training goals can influence the sort of advice and mentorship they’ll be able to give you over time.
What degrees does the PI have?
Where have they trained? What has their career trajectory looked like? Peoples’ stories and the sort of mentorship/advice you may get from them go much deeper than what you see on paper, so don’t read too much into this and if you think someone looks interesting, give them a chance. There are lots of nuances and exceptions to what you see on paper as well:
Just because they have an MD doesn’t mean they are a practicing physician.
Just because they have a PhD doesn’t mean their work isn’t highly clinically related.
Just because they have an MD and a PhD doesn’t mean they went through an 8-year combined MD/PhD program (if the latter is your goal and you are wanting perspective from someone who has done a combined MD/PhD program).
PI’s Direct Involvement in Lab
How directly involved is the PI in their lab?
Does the PI love bench science and they are in lab several hours a day running experiments? (this could also be the sign of an early lab where the PI doesn’t yet have the funding to support more lab members)
Is the PI a later-career expert who is traveling 90% of the time and maybe appears in lab once a month? Both of these scenarios can and do occur.
Diversity of the Lab
What is the breadth of identities and lived experiences of lab members?
The different forms and flavors of diversity - both visible and invisible - are obviously incredibly complex and include diversity in race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity, disability, religion, body appearance, financial background, culture, and age, and many more lived experiences. Lab members should exhibit mutual respect for one another and desire to understand and appreciate one another’s experiences.
Evaluating diversity may not be a trivial process, but it is one that you should embark upon when picking your lab. Other than helping you learn and grow in ways that are important for every human being, engaging and listening in environments with diverse voices/ideas clearly makes for better science:
These are complex elements of human experience in our society and world, and you must take great care as you learn about them. Please make sure to be respectful, consider how your words and actions may be received by those around you, and continuously check yourself on assumptions you might be making.
Overall Structure of the Lab
Is this a big lab or a small lab?
Is there one PI, or are there co-PIs?
Is there a lab manager who oversees the ordering of reagents, organization of freezers, etc? (this can be extremely helpful with organization)
PI’s Mentorship Philosophy
A critical part of finding a good lab is finding one in which you receive high quality mentorship. Mentorship looks different for different people, and part of all of our journeys is figuring out what we are looking for in our mentors. You can and should have multiple different mentors, and your PI doesn’t have to fulfill every single thing you want from a mentor, but you should consider which mentorship qualities your PI possesses in choosing a lab.
Mentorship, feedback, guidance, coaching, support, and sponsorship, are the things I’m getting at with this task.
Is this a PI who can help you through the turbulent waters of science and the many unwritten expectations for conducting yourself in this field?
Can your PI offer honest and constructive feedback, helping you to recognize and correct your weaknesses and areas that must improve? If your PI is incapable of delivering critical feedback without making trainees feel ashamed or humiliated, that is a huge red flag.
Is this someone you can turn to for support when things go wrong in your life? Do you trust them?
Frequency of 1:1 Meetings With PI
1:1 meetings with your PI are high-yield opportunities for you to receive direct feedback, mentorship, and tailored input from someone who is experienced in academic research and cares about you.
Is this person a new faculty who is just starting at the university? They may have more time for you.
Is this person a department chair who is chief editor of a major scientific journal and has high-level leadership positions in many different spaces in academic medicine? You will likely see less of them then.
Age of the Lab
Is this lab just getting off the ground with a PI who recently finished their post-doc?
This could mean you could develop a much closer relationship with the PI and lab members as you are bonding by launching the lab together.
This could mean the PI is ‘hungry’ to prove themselves in the field and they want to publish publish publish, AKA they will be excited if you, too, are hungry and want to accomplish a lot.
This could also mean that things are extremely stressful and you have to spend much more time doing lab chores as the lab cannot afford to hire a tech yet.
Or has this lab been going for 30 years with a senior, well-known PI who is getting invited to give lectures all over the country/world?
These experiences will be very different. Neither are right or wrong, both carry their own benefits and limitations.
Size of Lab
How many people are in this lab? Is there one other person in it? Are there 50 people in it?
Research Focus of Lab
This is getting at the science itself. What field does the lab’s work fall in? What questions is this lab asking about nature? How are questions answered?
One means by which questions are answered in many labs is with model organisms. A model is exactly that – something that models something else. Many biomedical labs studying human diseases cannot set up experiments in human beings as that is of course extremely unethical, so we must model the disease process in other organisms, such as mice, flies, zebrafish, or primates.
If this lab exclusively uses mouse models, get ready to handle a bunch of mice.
If the lab exclusively uses cell culture, get ready to know your way around working in a hood and sterile technique.
Are you interested in the questions this lab is asking, as well as learning the methods by which the lab pursues those questions?
Stages of Training of Lab Members
Who is in this lab? This will define the experience and expertise of people you can turn to when things go wrong.
If you are the only one in the lab, then you are going to be asking the PI for day-to-day technical issues that arise.
If there are 10 post-docs, 10 PhD students, 2 master’s students, and 4 undergrads in the lab, you have many people you can turn to.
Something else you’ll notice in training is that you will get different perspectives, which may or may not be more or less accurate, from people who are in different stages of their careers. You can get helpful advice and mentorship from all of these people.
There are valuable lessons to be learned from other undergrads, master’s students, PhD students, post-docs, and co-PIs. Take note of the people you will be around in a given lab.
Projects You Could Work On
Every lab exists because there are gaps in knowledge in nature, and we ask major questions to fill those gaps through projects. So every lab will have projects, but what projects are you specifically interested in?
It is perfectly fine to say, “any project.”
It is perfectly fine to say, “a specific project based on my specific interests.”
Would you be involved in creating your own project?
Would you start in the lab by helping on one project, and then after some time, pilot your own project? (this is common)
This item should be a two-way street discussion between you and your potential PI
Who Will You Interact with Day-to-Day?
If the PI is busy in their office writing grants a lot of the time (as many PIs are), who are you going to be working with (if anyone) in the lab?
Are you going to be paired with a grad student or post-doc?
Is that person friendly?
Are they invested in training you?
Or do they feel forced to because the PI said so and they have a bad attitude? (red flag)
Are they stressed out by the PI being mean to them and are going to project that frustration on to you? That is not a fun person to work with. (red flag)
Or are they passionate about teaching and cherish the opportunity to ‘pay it forward’?
How safe do you feel telling this person you broke something or messed something up that they just showed you how to do? This will 100% happen.
Lab Culture
How close are lab members? This is an enormous spectrum.
Some labs are like family, hanging out for social events and fun outside of lab, laughing together in the lab
Unfortunately the worst end of the spectrum is labs where members are working to sabotage one another, berate and degrade one another. (huge red flag)
Getting a sense of the lab culture is really important before committing to a lab.
How do lab members interact with each other?
Are they playful and even prankful in appropriate ways? That’s probably a good sign.
Are they neutral toward one another?
Or are they short and tense with one another? (red flag)
How do YOU feel observing what is a very tiny glimpse of the lab culture, likely to be very biased by the fact that lab members know you are observing them?
Do you feel comfortable? This can be complicated as science is intimidating and this can definitely make you feel like an imposter (you’re not!), but what I mean by ‘comfortable’ is more, does your gut tell you that you trust and feel secure with the personalities around you?
Of course, any instance in which you feel that a significant part of your identity or background such as your race, ethnicity, religion, body appearance, sexuality, gender identity, disability, financial background, culture, and age, has been treated disrespectfully or inappropriately in the lab is a HUGE red flag and also something that if you feel safe to, is grounds for reporting to your institution and other authorities. This is not your fault and is the fault of the people who mistreated you. You always deserve to be treated with respect.
Overlap of Projects in the lab
Are lab members highly collaborative in the work that they do?
Does each individual lab member’s project highly relate to others? Is there a core set of methods and procedures (cell culture, western blots, microscopy, etc) that every lab member is doing?
Or is everyone in their own universe, with research projects extending out in many different directions?
This ability to take a bird’s eye view of the lab and take stock of the existing projects and people’s roles definitely takes time and experience, but it’s good to start thinking about this now.
Track Record of Training People in Your Shoes
Has this PI/lab had other undergrads before? You should absolutely reach out to them wherever they are now and ask about their experience in the lab.
What do those undergrads go on to do?
If a previous undergrad (or any lab member) tells you this lab wasn’t a safe or respectful environment, that is a serious red flag.
Publications
Publications are the currency of academic research, and if you are reading this post, likely your future goals. In the field of science, publications are the principal measurement of research success, productivity, and output, whether we like it or not. They are extremely important for all career advancement, grant funding, hiring decisions, awards, etc., and you should take note of how frequent your lab is publishing, what journals they’re publishing in, and if long-term undergrads in the lab have papers of their own.
A lab that has 10 papers in the past couple years in Nature, Science, Cell, etc., with lab members who are first authors and the PI is the last author (AKA the senior author), is probably extremely productive
A lab that has 10 people in it and a single publication in the past 5 years in a low-impact journal is not publishing often.
These two examples are extremes; vast majority of labs will fall somewhere in between. You will improve over time at getting a sense of how productive a lab is publication-wise, as you go through PubMed, immerse in literature, etc.
You don’t need to know a lab’s papers inside and out right now. I would argue that you want a sense of whether it will be ordinary and achievable for you to publish in that lab, by looking at whether other trainees are able to publish in that lab.
Career Trajectories of Previous Lab Members
This item more broadly includes all stages of training for lab members.
Are undergrads who graduate from the lab meeting their training goals? (pre-med -> med school, pre-PhD -> grad school, etc)
Are PhD students who graduate becoming successful post-docs or entering their desired positions in industry or government?
It is a good sign when people departing the lab are doing so for happy reasons.
Departmental/Institutional Context
Each lab has a larger departmental and institutional context it fits into.
Is this the only lab on campus doing work even remotely related to their research topic?
Or, is this a cancer lab at a bustling comprehensive cancer center with hundreds of other labs, and enormous financial and departmental support, seasoned with many opportunities for trainees?
The larger ecosystem that the lab fits into may or may not have a significant impact on the experience you will have in the lab.
Lab Meetings
Is there a recurring lab meeting?
What is that like?
What are expectations for presenting? Is it formal? Is it relaxed?
Is it a really stressful two-hour ordeal where the person presenting that week gets yelled at by the PI and insulted for not knowing a super nitty gritty detail? (red flag)
Is it an hour-long roundtable where everyone casually delivers what they’ve been up to the past week and people are friendly?
Organization and Physical Layout
If you are going to be spending many hours, and hopefully years, in the same lab, it may be worth considering what the physical layout is like at least a bit.
Will you have your own desk and/or bench space?
Are there a bunch of beautiful windows?
Or are you in a roach-infested basement level of the only building on campus built before 1800?
Is your desk somewhere outside of the designated lab space such that you can have food and drink while you work there?
Or will you need to walk outside the lab space every time you want to your morning coffee?
For organization, although many labs may appear somewhat chaotic with lots of instruments and reagents sitting around, what I really mean by organization is, how diligent and consistent is the lab about being organized?
Is there a hired lab coordinator whose full time job it is to order things for the lab and make sure lab needs are being met?
Does the lab have a super accurate shared folder for tracking where important mother stocks of cells and reagents are kept in -80 freezer and liquid nitrogen freezers?
Is there an organized method for thawing out personal use reagents from the larger mother stocks?
Or is it the wild west – things are strewn about, no one knows where anything is, storage tracking documents are not kept up to date, etc?
This can really shape how easy or difficult it is for you as a new person to learn where things are and find them in the lab.
Lab Location
Is the lab close or far to where you will be during most of your undergraduate training?
How difficult will it be for you to get to this lab?
If you’re surviving a difficult exam week and need to go into lab at 11pm to take care of your cells, how easy or hard will that be?
Funding
Getting paid for research as an undergraduate is complicated and often there are institutional policies that prevent you from simultaneously getting academic credit for research and getting paid in the same semester. However, if you are making a sincere effort in your lab work I think you should be paid for this. And you should at least get a sense of the general financial climate of your lab, as this can affect not just your own personal pay, but also the experience you have, the amount of stress your PI is under, and it can sort of speak about the relative stability of the lab.
An active RO1 from the NIH is a great sign.
Take a look at the external (NIH, NSF, DoD, etc) grants your lab has, and the internal ones (grants from your own institution, startup $ given to a new PI in the first few years when they are recruited to a new position)
Does the PI have the funding to pay you?
Is this a prosperous time in the lab? Is there good funding, growth, are things stable?
Is funding in question? Is your PI really stressed because they’re about to lose their lab? This is not a stable situation you should thrust yourself into.
Time Commitment
Picking a good lab and seeking a long-term (think YEARS) research experience in that lab where you develop skills and independence over time, can train you so much better, and advance your career much further, than pursuing a bunch of flashy-sounding 3-month internships where you scratch the surface in each one.
This is often a very difficult concept for pre-meds who are being constantly bombarded with messages that you need to, ‘do all the things.’ Don’t get me wrong - it is absolutely fine to do a semester of research just to get exposure. There also is utility for breadth and exploring new things. But I am saying, if you are serious about research and want it to be a major part of your training and potentially your career, you need to go 10 miles deep, not 10 miles wide. Less is more.
What sort of time commitment does your PI expect? What sort of time commitment do YOU want to be putting in? Some semester course-loads will be very difficult, but you will grow the most in lab when you are going in basically every day for a substantial period of time each day. You will learn much more then, vs. if you took that same amount of time and spread out over a larger period. Being immersed in lab is really important for growing as a scientist.
Red Flags
You should not settle for a lab where you are noticing red flags.
Let me say that again.
You should not settle for a lab where you are noticing red flags. I promise there are other labs that will support you so much better. It is not worth it. Finding your people and finding a lab community that is truly supportive will bring out your best work.
Conclusion
Ultimately, you should Find a lab where you are supported as a person and a scientist in the ways you need. Go with your heart. Thank you for reading, and feel free to reach out if there’s any way I can support your journey.
