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November 29, 2004 Vol. 75, no. 9F
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| Engineering physics sophomore
Michelle Yong shares the research she did as a freshman at the November
17 poster session. Yong nabbed a research spot at Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory’s Advanced Light Source. |
For engineering
physics sophomore, sooner is better for landing coveted research job
Every day this past summer,
engineering physics student Michelle Yong hoofed it up the hill or rode
the bus to her job at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).
For $11 an hour, Yong worked on creating a graphical user interface
using standard filters and image processing tools that would help researchers
analyze images taken by the X-ray microscope, Advanced Light Source
(ALS). Those images might be early forms of “cat scans” for
biological cells, promising a better understanding of human diseases
at the molecular level and possibly new discoveries for treating those
diseases.
Yong taught herself the intricacies of programming in the lab’s
language of choice, IDL, reading at least 500 pages of instruction manuals.
She also learned digital signal processing concepts. She even rubbed
elbows with full-time researchers at ALS’s regular Thursday afternoon
cookie social hour. On November 17, she showcased her research to over
150 faculty, visitors and fellow students at the fall 2004 undergraduate
engineering and science poster session.
It may have been cool science, but Yong’s motives were serious.
As an undergraduate, she was hell-bent on getting that all-important
research experience for her resume. But she wasn’t a senior staring
into the barrel of a grad school application. She was a freshman.
“I knew coming into Berkeley that I had to find research as quickly
as possible,” says Yong, who wants to be a professor, though she
hasn’t decided which field, yet. “It’s never too early
to start.”
While there are no statistics on the number of freshmen doing research,
“it’s not typical for freshmen to get into research, usually
because they don’t have the skills,” says Yong’s faculty
advisor, EE Professor in Residence, David Attwood. “But we’re
always looking for ways to get them going as soon as possible. The sooner
they get started, the better.”
It’s a strategy that also paid off for engineering physics sophomore
Mike Kurylo, who did his perceptual grouping research last year as a
freshman. He was one of the poster session winners.
For those wanting to follow in Yong and Kurylo’s footsteps, there
are undergraduate research programs (see links below). Professor Attwood
also recommends attending student-faculty mixers, social events, pizza
with professors, and faculty office hours.
Yong says she got her job through such a networking opportunity; she
passed a resume to Attwood, who then passed it on to his graduate student.
Yong also recommends searching the Internet for programs at the NSF
and the national labs, talking to other undergrads about how they found
their research position, and soliciting professors for a spot in their
labs.
In the future, Yong says she plans to continue working on the user interface,
and then become more involved with the actual experimental X-ray work.
But it wasn’t always this promising. Yong says she was turned down
by another program before she was offered the LBNL job. “You can’t
give up applying,” she says to others on the research hunt. “It’s
out there. Keep trying.” Yong’s top picks for research programs
are: http://www.nsf.gov/home/crssprgm/reu/start.htm,
http://research.berkeley.edu/urap/,
and http://www.lbl.gov/Education/.
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