Me vs Big New Research

Hi again everyone! I am back with another blog post and this time around I get to speak about my experiences on beginning my project. My start was a bit unconventional when it started in Summer 2022. I was gearing up for the summer after concluding my first year at Pitt and I desperately searched…

A State of Suspense

In Contemporary Film with Dr. Heinzl last Spring, I was introduced to Midsommar, a pagan folk horror film directed by Ari Aster. Some 148 minutes later, I sat back in awe with only two thoughts: “So, that’s what the bear was for!”… and “I’ve never seen a film that engaged my imagination quite like this…

CUTF: Getting Involved in Teaching on Campus

Hi, everyone! Welcome to my second post of the semester! I have many friends in the natural sciences who have served as undergraduate TAs before, and it was always something I was interested in doing as well. I did not know what form this could take in the areas of study I am pursuing as…

How I got involved with research! (and how you can too!)

Hi (again)! This is my second blog post and I will be talking about how to get involved with research at Pitt. If you want to read more about me, and my general experience with research you can find my first blog post here. It is actually super easy to join a lab at Pitt….

CUTF 2: Teaching, Learning, Growing

When I took Science & Religion (S&R) with Dr. Brock Bahler my junior year at Pitt, I was thrilled to explore the intersections between my pre-med and Religious Studies courses. In class, we discussed concepts including how astronomy interacts with theism and how one might reconcile beliefs in both the divine and evolution. When Dr….

Road to Research

While I didn’t actually meet him at the time, I first came into contact with my mentor, Dr. Ming Chen, when I attended a math department seminar in the Fall of 2021. I had seen fliers around the mathematics building about the talk titled: Understanding Nonlinear Surface Water Waves on Deep Water. I was fascinated,…

CURF 2: My Path to Infant Research

During the spring of my sophomore year, after a semester and a half of taking online classes, I decided to look at the psychology website’s undergraduate research page in an effort to get more involved at Pitt. Instead of going with a direct goal in mind, I browsed through the options looking for the lab…

CURF 2: Building Bridges in Research

As a high-schooler passionate about science and pursuing a pre-medical pathway, the University of Pittsburgh seemed like a natural next step in my educational journey. With Pittsburgh’s sprawling healthcare industry, rigorous graduate programs, and growing Honors College, there are abundant opportunities for research. As I had dreamed of before coming to Pitt, I have since…

Blog 2: Becoming a Researcher

I first became interested in research by speaking with some students about their experiences in research labs. I then did some exploring online and found a wealth of amazing and intriguing research going on at Pitt and began reaching out to labs that I saw were looking for students or that just sounded interesting. I…

Researching Researchers and Researching Research

Hi all, this is a continuation of my first blog post, which I would recommend reading before this one, that you can find here. Finding research is easy (probably not absolutely true, but seems to be true in most cases). Finding good research is hard (I think of good research as having two aspects: being…