If you answer yes to at least two of the questions above, you may be a good fit within my lab. To help you and me make this assessment,
please send me via email the following information: a) a statement of why you want to join my lab and why my lab seems to be a good fit for you; and b) a brief description of your previous research experience.
As you may be comparing potential graduate advisors, make sure to ask them about their mentoring philosophy. Here’s mine in brief. It is always an honor and a great responsibility to mentor talented students. So my job is to help my students find their passions, obtain scientific skills, focus on their research productively, and ultimately to help them fulfill their career goals.
As
‘education is a key to independence’, I have different levels of expectation on individual graduate students. If you are a MSc student, I expect that you can be an
independent entry-level researcher, who is able to plan and conduct assigned experiments. After finishing the training with me, you should be a good part of a laboratory and well conduct research under the supervision of any scientists. But if you are a PhD student, I expect you to be an
independent scientist who can hypothesize, plan, conduct experiments, interpret and discuss results, and report your findings either by writing or oral presentation. I’ll prepare you to be an independent scientist through research-based training. Also, I encourage all students to push and help one another to do the best possible research. I expect all members of my lab to both offer and accept constructive criticism and assistance. Finally, although I believe money must not be the first priority to choose my lab, I have certain Graduate Student Assistantships and Fellowship Stipends for students who require.
If you wish to join my lab, I can accept MSc and PhD students through the Biochemistry (MSc/PhD) Graduate Program. Please see
the webpage of graduate school for information about application deadlines and requirements. If you are already enrolled in one of our Graduate Programs, please contact me via
email or stop by my office at B310.
— Sittinan
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1) And because our research focus is at the frontier and takes place at the limits of knowledge, you (and I) often need to learn many new things and use new techniques to answer those problems.
2) I am lucky enough to see new biology textbooks describing findings that my colleagues and I discovered many years back. It is my desire to share this indefinable feelings and experience to my students through research in my lab.
3) As a mentor of future
independent researchers, I give my students full intellectual freedom. You may read, think, and come up with ideas and/or hypotheses. I always encourage my students to do so and discuss with me. If you can intellectually convince me, I’ll let you do what you want.