This page provides an overview of choosing a suiting research project at the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign Digital Health Group.

<aside> 🔍 We want to ensure that you have the best possible experience when working on a research project. We therefore ask you to first read the Research Project Guide.

</aside>

How do I Choose a Good Topic?

An important aspects for choosing your research project are:

  1. Enthusiasm to work on the project and a drive to work on the research project: Please be sure that you select a research project that you are passionate about and that you want to work on for a significant amount of time. If you do not find a project that fits your interests in the open topics section, feel free to propose your own project following the same steps as outlined in the Research Project Guide and on this page.
  2. Be honest about your time and the effort that you can put into the project: Conducing research can be exciting but also a time-consuming effort. Be honest about your time availability during the project and directly communicate how much time you can invest in the project.
  3. Existing skills and learning opportunities: A research project is an amazing opportunity to learn new skills and extend your skillset. Be sure that you select a project that provides you the ability to grow while ensuring that you have the foundational knowledge to get started. Each open project contains a set of links to get started with. Use these starting points to demonstrate your current experience and your ability to work on the research area.

The Open Topics page contains open topics that are currently available in our research group.

Each topic contains a set of links and first tasks to get familiar with the topic. These tasks help you to get familiar with the topic and demonstrate your existing knowledge and willingness to learn about the research topic.

<aside> 💡 Most of our current team members started as open-source contributors to some of our open-source initiatives. This is a great way to get started in all of the projects and stand out from the crowd 🚀

</aside>

Feel free to use the linked GitHub issues, projects, repositories, or documents to ask any questions and get input in your first steps.

How do I Reach Out and Get Started?

<aside> đź‘‹ We are looking forward to working with you! We highly encourage you to follow the steps outline below to ensure that you have the best possible experience, can learn a lot during your project, and have a tangible outcome.

Stanford Students: Don’t hesitate to reach out to Paul Schmiedmayer for an in-person meeting before you do a deep drive into one of the projects to learn more how we can best support you within Stanford and the Byers Center for Biodesign to complete some first steps.

</aside>

Once you are familiar with the general topic and have demonstrated the necessary fundamental technical skills to work on the project, please reach out to the topic supervisor via email and detail the following information so we can setup a first meeting:

  1. Why: Why do you want to work on the project and why are you enthusiastic about the topic?
  2. Time: How much time can you invest in the topic, when do you want to get started, and when do you plan to finish up the work? This will help us to identify the best possible timeline and scope for the project. We expect a time commitment of at least 10 hours a week.
  3. Context: How is the research project embedded in your existing studies? This will help us to find the perfect scope and focus of your project. Do you want to work on …
    1. … learning experiences or open-source contributions without the intention to conduct in-depth research? We always welcome implementation-focused projects and aim to make them the best possible learning experience! This is a great shortcut for Stanford students who want to focus on implementation and translation!
    2. … a final project for your studies, and independent research study, or are interested research credits? How many research credits do you need and how are they embedded in your studies? You can learn more about the possible research courses at Stanford CURIS.
    3. … are you interested in writing a master’s or bachelor’s thesis and join Stanford as a visiting student researcher? You can learn more about joining as a VSR at Fees, Responsibilities, Restrictions, and Privileges for Visiting Student Researchers.
    4. … an internship, or a payed engagement as part of a project with research funding? We have several opportunities especially targeted to Stanford students that we are happy to share with you!
  4. Outcome: What is your expected outcome? What do you want to have as a tangible result at the end of your project? Do you want to publish at a specific conference or a specific journal, are you interested to join an existing publication effort in our group?
  5. Your Skills & First Steps: Please share the work that you did to investigate the topic.
    1. We want to ensure that you have the best possible experience in a project and match your skills to the available open position. Please demonstrate & share your skills or willingness to learn and engage.
    2. We strongly encourage you to have shown significant effort in the linked first steps (e.g. first merged PR or closed issues) that you can find in the topic description.