Rotations -- a.k.a., "How can I find the lab in which I'll spend the next four to seven years of my life??"

Finding a Rotation

First off, relax. There's plenty of research at Hopkins, and you can always branch out to include more professors or topics in your particular focus. The entire first year of an incoming student is funded by the department, which means that you can work for any professor without worrying about being tied to whomever is paying your stipend. First years usually do one to three rotations, either during a semester, during Intercession (the month of January), or during the summer.

Secondly, figure out what sorts of problems you want to solve. Some good questions to ask yourself:

• Do you want to do research that's more clinical, more basic science, or more engineering?
• Do you want to work with cells, animals, or people?
• Which human system do you want to focus on (brain, heart, lungs, muscles, etc.)?
• Would you rather work on the med campus or the Homewood campus?
• What's in your current toolbox? Is there anything that you've learned in the past that you particularly like, and would like to continue developing?
• What sorts of techniques or problem-solving skills would you like to learn in grad school?

Once you have a pretty good idea of what you like, check out the BME department's Research Areas or our list of BME Faculty by area. You can get a gist of which areas focus on solving which problems. You can also look through the BME department's website for the names of Primary Laboratories and see which ones you like. If you're interested in NeuroEngineering, you can look through the NeuroEngineering Training Initiative website. Once you have a list of possible professors, look up their papers in the NIH's PubMed Database or Google Scholar. Which problems intrigue you? Which methods, techniques, or technology look interesting?

Next, email the professors that you're interested in. Include a short introduction on who you are, stating that you're a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering and that you'd like to talk with that professor about his/her research. You might want to include where you're from, what your previous experience was, and why you are interested in his/her lab. Include an updated copy of your curriculum vitae. Feel free to email more than one professor; these emails are usually just asking, "Can we talk about your research?" Once you meet, don't be afraid to tell the professor that you're talking to several possibilities, too. You only start working in a lab once you agree to start as a rotation student.