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Writer's pictureQhansa D.

Why Joining a Research Lab in Undergrad is Important?

As college students, we pay the same tuition fees and living costs (it depends where you live). But, in most research labs, you don't have to pay an extra fee to join a research lab. At least that was based on my experience as an undergrad.


If you want to watch me rambling about this topic, you can watch the video on my YouTube Channel:


Let's get started!

When I was an undergrad, I joined a research lab called Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Basically, in my faculty, there are so many different kinds of research labs, these are the lab names:

  • Multimedia

  • Artificial Intelligence

  • Computing

  • Hardware & Embedded System

  • Forensic & Security

  • Network & Operating System

  • Data Mining

  • Database

  • Software Engineering

  • Game Development

  • Mobile App Development

  • E-Learning

  • High-Performance Computing

  • Internet of Things

  • and many more.

Since there are many different kinds of research labs, I encourage you to join one of them if you can go to college.

Why? These are the benefits that you would get if you joined a research lab.

BENEFIT #1: GET MORE EXPOSURE AND LEARN EARLIER THAN YOUR PEERS/CLASSMATES

In my case, the artificial intelligence course will be given to the students in the 5th semester and the machine learning course in the 6th semester. However, since I joined the artificial intelligence laboratory, I can learn the materials earlier when I was in my 2nd and 3rd semester.

BENEFIT #2: LEARN HOW TO DO RESEARCH BEFORE YOUR UNDERGRAD THESIS

Basically, in your senior year (7th until 8th semester), you need to prepare your undergraduate thesis, right? And it's tough to know what to do if you don't have any guidance. So, since in most research labs, they have a research/focus group. So, you can try to research with your colleagues, and there will be a supervisor (aka. your lecturer). From that experience, you can try and see how to do research and create a research paper correctly.


Joining a research lab is very beneficial if you want to learn earlier, find the guidance, and the community.

During my 4th until 5th semester, I was one of the artificial intelligence lab's undergraduate researchers (aka. joining the focus group). We were working on this project called the Twitter Named Entity Recognition. Although the research was unfinished, at least I could learn how to maintain the project from the beginning until the end. So, when I was in my 7th semester, where I should start writing my undergraduate thesis proposal, I can see the big picture earlier.


BENEFIT #3: HAVING A LIKE-MINDED COMMUNITY

You know, it's tough to find like-minded people, especially if you're interested in a specific area; in my case, it was Artificial Intelligence (AI). It wasn't easy to talk about AI research with my friends in the sports community or the organization. That's why, if you want to dive in a little bit more about research/engineering or probably you have a plan to get a further education (e.g., doing a master's degree or Ph.D.), YOU SHOULD JOIN A RESEARCH LAB IN YOUR UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE.


But, if you can't, that's okay! You can join a research lab when you're doing your master's degree or a Ph.D.

Well, I hope that this blog post is helpful for you. If you want me to share more knowledge-sharing content about college/informatics engineering, Don't forget to Like, Comment, and Share this blog post so you can inspire your beloved one too :)

See you around!


BYE! :D

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