Thinking about these questions is a good place to start sifting out potential research interests and learning objectives.
Consider your timeline.
As with any new endeavour, planning is key. The two big questions you want to ask yourself are: “When do I want to start?” and “If everything goes smoothly, how long do I want to be in this lab?”.
It is highly recommended that you find your mentor at least one semester before you want to start in the lab. This will give you time to make any necessary changes to your schedule, and it will also give your mentor time to think of a project for you. Trying to set up research a few weeks before the semester starts opens you up to unforeseen obstacles that could have been worked around if you had asked earlier. Depending on how technically demanding the research is, the training required for your project could take anywhere from a few weeks to a whole semester. Additionally, despite what we may be led to believe with the barrage of new scientific information available every day, science can be pretty slow. You probably want to spend at least a year in a lab in order to reach a level of productivity where you can gain meaningful research experience. So, considering these factors, you want to start looking for a mentor early on in the semester before you’d like to start in the lab. For example, if you were looking to be in a lab throughout your senior year, you may want to start looking for a mentor in the spring of your junior year. Of course, the earlier you can start, the better, as this will give you more time to explore all your scientific interests and build your research skill set.
When looking for a mentor, faculty directories are a great place to start.
Consider all the different perspectives you can take when approaching your research interests, and identify the relevant departments (including professional schools and UHM affiliated research institutions).
Carefully look through the faculty listed on the sites and pay close attention to their areas of research. There is a good chance that you will be unfamiliar with some of the areas of research being listed. Don’t be afraid to do some reading of your own to get yourself more familiar with the research landscape in your areas of interest. You may very well come across exciting new concepts you have never heard of!
Another approach would be to discuss your interests with a faculty member you have rapport with. They may be able to give you suggestions for further reading and point you towards other faculty with expertise in the area.
Create a list of potential faculty mentors that you would like to reach out to.
Now that you have a long-list of faculty mentors you may be interested in working with, it’s time to do your own research on them.
Many faculty members have websites for their labs where you can find information about ongoing projects, publications, and current lab members. Familiarise yourself with their current projects by reading some of their publications and take a moment to think of some follow-up questions of your own. These questions may evolve into projects down the line or, at the very least, it shows your commitment to engaging with the content.
It is also important to consider your personal learning objectives: why do you want to be in the lab? What do you hope to accomplish by participating in research? Maybe you want to learn how to formulate a reasonable hypothesis, or how to design an experiment, or how to process and analyse data, or how to code, or how to build competency with lab techniques - the list goes on!
It is important to have tangible goals that you can aim for while conducting research so that your time in the lab doesn’t devolve into just another thing on your CV.