My research allows (and I enjoy) student involvement at all levels and from many perspectives. See the lab webpage for current students and brief descriptions of their projects.

When contacting me about research opportunities, please describe what you expect to learn and accomplish in your project, how your background has prepared you for this, and how the project fits with your overall interests and longer-term goals. The more concrete you can be, the better. In order to filter out "spam" requests, I delete those that don't cover this material or that show no connection to my research areas.

To answer a frequently asked question, yes, it is possible to dive into computational biology without knowing a protein from a nucleic acid, although obviously you'll want to gain a basic understanding quickly. (Course materials from CS 88/188, Introduction to Bioinformatics, will help.) I welcome both biology-oriented (applying techniques to answer scientific questions) and computation-oriented (developing, extending, and analyzing techniques) students.

Independent study projects will be structured so that we both know what's expected. Depending on your background, the first couple of weeks can be somewhat exploratory, to help pin down a topic. At that point, you will develop a more detailed project proposal outlining our expectations, shorter- and longer-term goals and milestones, contingencies (this is research, after all), and the end-of-semester deliverables (hypotheses to be tested, code, written and oral reports, etc.). I will use this proposal as the basis for determining a grade. We will meet regularly in person and over email, and can update the plan as research progresses. While the university structures independent study projects as semester-long, I encourage involvement for a least a year, so that the initial effort in getting going will lead to substantial payoff.

In general, funded research associate positions will stem from other interactions, such as classes and independent research projects, where we've gotten to know each other. By then, you will be able to identify specific research topics and approaches that you would like to pursue and to which you would like to devote the significant effort required of an RA. Exceptional students already at this level are welcome to contact me to discuss their research agendas and possible funding opportunities.

Please send all electronic correspondence via good old-fashioned text-based email (no need for fancy fonts or character sets), with any attachments using platform-independent encodings (e.g. text and pdf, but not MS Word).