Student Interest Survey

Section 1 — About You

What is your full name?

Degree program and year

CV or resume – please attach or paste a link (optional but encouraged)

Section 2 — What You're Looking For. Select all that apply. Be honest — this helps us find the right fit.

What are your primary reasons for wanting to join a research project right now?

Genuine curiosity about the science

Publication authorship

Building skills for PhD applications

Letter of recommendation

Career exploration — still figuring out my direction

Building skills for industry roles

How important is publication authorship to you specifically?

Not important right now

Nice to have but not a priority

Important – I'd like to publish something before I graduate

Very important – it's one of the main reasons I'm interested

Section 3 — How You Work

Which of these work modes genuinely excite you? (select all that apply)

Hands-on lab work — preparing samples, running instruments

Computational work — coding, pipelines, data analysis

Literature research — deep reading, synthesizing evidence, writing

Classification and annotation — methodical, detail-oriented review

Visualization and communication — making data clear and understandable

Working with AI tools and prompt engineering

Project coordination — organizing tasks, keeping things on track

How independent are you as a researcher? Be honest.

I work best with clear, structured tasks and regular check-ins

I can take a defined task and run with it, checking in when stuck

Give me a goal and a deadline — I'll figure out the path

I prefer to design my own approach and work largely autonomously

How do you approach a tool or software you've never used before?

I wait until someone shows me how to use it

I follow tutorials step by step until I get it working

I dive in, break things, search aggressively, and figure it out

I read the documentation first, then experiment

Section 4 — Skills & AI Experience

Which of these have you worked with? (select all that apply)

Excel / Google Sheets for data analysis

ChatGPT / Claude / other AI assistants for research or coursework

AI tools for literature review (Elicit, Consensus, ResearchRabbit, etc.)

Bioinformatics tools (BLAST, AlphaFold, PyMOL, etc.)

Analytical instrumentation: GC, IR, UV-Vis, NMR

None of the above yet

Describe a paper, study, or scientific claim you encountered recently that you found unconvincing, surprising, or poorly designed. What made you think that?”

Section 5 — Where You're Headed

What's your current career direction? (select the closest)

Industry — pharma, biotech, health tech

Academia — research, PhD, faculty path

Clinical or applied health roles

Data science / AI / computational biology

Still exploring — genuinely undecided

In 2–3 sentences: what kind of work do you want to be doing in 5 years?

Section 6 — Project Fit

Which of these projects genuinely interest you most? Select your top two.

Project A – AlphaFold Protein Structure. Computational. Modeling enzyme structures relevant to melanin biosynthesis using AlphaFold and related tools. Requires comfort with computation or a strong drive to develop it quickly. High independence expected.

Project B – Ingredient Safety Dataset Validation. Literature-based. Independently classifying ingredients across safety dimensions using PubMed, LactMed, and published research. Meticulous, detail-oriented work. Two independent reviewers needed – must work without comparing answers until both are complete.

Project C – Food & Nutraceutical Authenticity (Chemometrics + AI). Mixed bench and computation. Building spectral libraries and machine learning models to detect adulteration in edible oils, protein powders, and natural sweeteners.

Project D – AI Literacy in Science Education. Studying how students use AI tools in coursework and what effective prompting looks like in science contexts.

Section 7 — One Open Question

You're working on an analysis – a literature review, a computational pipeline, or a lab experiment – and the result doesn't match what you expected. Walk us through what you actually do next. 4–8 sentences. This is not a test. There is no right answer, we're curious how you think.

Section 8 — Availability

How many hours per week can you realistically commit to research this semester?

What is your availability this summer?

Fully available — actively looking for summer research

Partially available — other commitments but real bandwidth

Not available — summer is spoken for

Are you available to continue research in the fall semester?

Yes — I'll still be enrolled and interested in continuing

Possibly — depends on how this semester goes

No — I'm graduating at the end of this semester or summer

No — other reasons