Biology major Emma Lederer, a rising junior at Providence College, is conducting research in Professor Jack Costello’s lab for her second Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) with Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR. 

Here, Lederer kicks off a series of blog posts she will write this summer during her research fellowship to share the experience from her perspective and develop her science communication skills.

First, here is a little background on me and why I’m writing this blog: I start my junior year in the fall at Providence College, where I am pursuing a major in biology and a minor in English literature. I started working in the research lab of Professor Jack Costello in Summer 2015, when I first participated in the Rhode Island EPSCoR SURF program, working mostly with jellyfish and focusing on fluid motion.

Now in my second summer in the SURF program, it seems like an appropriate time to reflect on my undergraduate research opportunity and share that experience with students who might be trying to figure out what path to take. In the past year, I have learned a lot about academic research because of how the SURF program has helped shape my experiences.

Last year, I realized I no longer wanted to pursue a medical degree and began to explore other options. I always have been passionate about habitat conservation and restoration, especially in the world’s oceans, so I decided to focus on finding job or academic opportunities where I could learn more about marine biology, which led to my first SURF experience.

Initially, when I was accepted to the SURF program, working with Professor Costello (Providence College) and Associate Professor Sean Colin (Roger Williams University), the title of the project was, “Population growth of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi in relation to temperature and prey availability.” But, the project evolved into “Fluid motion in sea invertebrates.” This change signaled my first lesson in academic research.

Real research is not like the lab you attend a few hours a week, when you are taking Introduction to biology. You aren’t handed a clear list of instructions to follow. Sometimes you have a project to work on, and it turns out you don’t have enough data or resources to do exactly what you wanted to do.

Sometimes, you have an idea for how to test a system that ends up being useless. In a real lab, you are the one figuring out what the list of instructions should be. This requires a lot more background work, like reading papers by other scientists in your field, and talking with mentors and colleagues. It also requires messing up … a lot.

You are constantly testing and revising your methods so that you can gather the most accurate data. There is a lot more trial and error and critical thinking involved in research than I expected when I first applied to the SURF program, which is why I have grown to love my work so much.

I don’t think I could have learned as much this past year without my SURF experience. The opportunity to work in a lab full time, instead of trying to juggle it with classes during the school year, gives you a chance to become truly engaged in what you’re doing. Working in a well established research team gives you a chance to take a step back and learn from the people around you.

Also, the field trips, informational sessions, and poster presentations that were a part of the SURF program were vital in helping me decide that I wanted to pursue academic research in my future. By getting to interact with other labs and people in the industry whose lives revolve around research, I realized how many options and opportunities there are in pursuing a career of that type. Being a researcher is so much more than sitting at a lab bench — although, that is definitely an integral part of the experience.