FINAL PROJECT: Abstract and Reader's Reponse > A Guide to Beginning Undergraduate Research in the Upadhyaya Biophysics Lab
S -- two comments on your difficult reader: 1) your relative inexperience can be a benefit in explaining complex information to a new lab technician. 2) You will offer the guide for editing to your post doc and PI. They can catch errors or help you with robust prose.
You can direct them to help you with the biological background as this is not your forte.
You can direct them to help you with the biological background as this is not your forte.
May 8, 2016 |
Marybeth Shea
Marybeth Shea
The purpose of my guide to the Upadhyaya Biophysics lab is to introduce new undergraduate members to the background information which is important for research in the lab. It will provide information that students with a biology background would probably be lacking as well as information that students with a physics background would probably be lacking. Furthermore it will include general background information from important papers in the field and recent papers publised by members of the lab. A set of instructions to a few basic procedures, which every member of the lab needs to be able to perform for experiments will also be included. This guide is modular and the reader can choose to read any of the sections as needed.
Readers Response:
It's great that you're collecting this information to provide as a resource to new students, but seeing as you're an undergraduate physics student, it seems like you're unqualified to explain a lot of the things going on in the lab. Sure, I trust that you have some experience in the lab at this point but shouldn't you leave the biological explanations to the graduate students or undergraduate biology students? It seems as if the biology information which you present is on the "need-to-know" level. You only provide enough information as is needed for a basic understanding of the experiments. This makes it difficult for me to understand other areas of research that can be pursued, which relate to the projects already going on in the lab. I think this guide could be enhanced if someone who knew more of the biological side of things were able to explain the significance of this research in context of other cellular processes.