Find Research as an Undergrad

3 Steps Toward Researching as an Undergrad

Each faculty research matrix serves as a starting point to help you identify research areas that you may be interested in and to know who among the faculty work in each research area. First steps:

1. Discover a topic of interest.

• If you need help determining a research area of interest, check out your department’s research matrix found below. The primary research areas are on the top row of each matrix.
• If you already know what topic you would like to work on, list the faculty members who work in the areas related to your topic. Each research area in the matrix is color-coded and helps you come up with a short list of possible faculty to contact.

Department Faculty Research Matrices

These matrices will help you discover faculty members that do research on the topics that interest you. Use them as a discovery tool from which to build your contact list.

*Note: Information included in the Department Faculty Research Matrices is subject to change.

2. After finding professors who work in your topic of interest, visit each of their webpages and their research groups’ website.

• Is the professor in your list accepting undergraduate students in the lab/group? Some professors have a section in their webpage about undergraduate research opportunities. Often you can discover if undergraduate students are currently working in their lab by selecting the “people” section of their site.

3. Contact the professor or the research group to ask about undergraduate research opportunities.

• To contact the research group, find out if there is a specific individual you should contact instead of the professor.
• If you need extra assistance, please contact us.