‘Honey Tips for Beginning Researchers’ was a virtual weekly mini-seminar with PhD candidate Eugene Yoon as part of USC KSEA YG’s Theme of the Month (TOTM) series. The event was held in a casual and cozy environment (half prepared content + half Q&A; ~1 hour sessions). Events were held as three sessions on Wednesday nights 8PM Pacific (9/9, 9/16, 9/23). There were over 10 participants in total, mostly early researchers with 0-2 years of experience.
Eugene graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2015 with a B.S. in chemical & biomolecular engineering and is currently wrapping up his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at USC. He has appeared on YTN science as part of the 2016 Young Generation Forum, was a JHU IRES research fellow in Belgium at the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre, presented work at the National Academy of Inventors student showcase, was an NSF INTERN awardee for work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and is a KSEA undergraduate/graduate scholarship recipient. His research interests are in polymer-based implantable brain-machine-interface technology.
The sessions were very interactive. For example, a participant could volunteer to explain their research and PI. Eugene would share his screen to show how to search in the conference proceedings of the volunteer’s research area. Also, when going over the topic of “how to write a paper” Eugene would share his screen to show various stages of papers he was personally working on (outline, lit. review, revisions, manuscript, proof). In the session, a participant could volunteer to explain their research and PI. Eugene would show how KSEA database/network could be used to find similar researchers
Topics of discussion ranged from the fundamentals of research and breaking into research to more advanced topics such as reading scientific papers, authoring/co-authors of a scientific paper, finding conferences/funding, and graduate school application tips.
Eugene also cleared up certain misconceptions or explained key tips such as that an MS is not necessarily required to do a PhD, the difference between a conference paper and a journal paper, how to use a reference manager (Endnote, Mendeley, Zotero), and how to leverage KSEA networks to perform literature reviews.
Eugene shared many personal (sometimes embarrassing) stories about research mistakes/lessons. For example, Eugene shared a story about constantly falling asleep when trying to read journal papers until he learned the “correct” way to read papers. Eugene also shared how different universities provided different PhD funding packages or had different cultures.
The session was very well received by the participants because Eugene could provide graduate student’s point of view; very helpful for undergraduates trying to break into a new research lab – especially in light of current pandemic restrictions. Participants also got to know each other and made inter-USC KSEA connections as well. All powerpoint slides were shared with participants and a Kakao Groupchat was created as a support group.
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