Talking about research in interviews

KarEntropy

So I've got a couple of interviews coming up and I'm not sure how much interviewers will want to know about my research. I'm a research asssistant in a lab, but not involved in too much "real thinking" because I don't have the biochemical background to help out in that respect (I can do troubleshooting of assays and that kind of thinking, but not much analysis or planning). I know WHY we're doing the research, what we hope to gain from it, and I understand the details of a project I worked on extensively last spring. But lately I've been just doing western blots, luciferase assays, etc. for my boss, and he seems to be working on a different project every week, and usually several projects at once, making it hard to keep up with what exactly we're doing currently. I'm just not sure how much detail I should be prepared to go into, and if I should ask my boss to explain in detail what he's been working on lately. Insights?

madscientist

Um. They might ask you WHY you chose to do research or WHAT you get out of it, but not so much what your specific work is.*

*Unless you are interviewing MD/PhD, in which case I have no idea.
*Unless you are interviewing at a major research school or your interviewer does the EXACT same research as you.

I've only been on one interview so far since I am undergrad. But don't worry too much. Just be able to talk about why research is important and what it means to you.

Helen

Talk about the BIG PICTURE. For example, I discovered an awesome link between a drug for disease A, that also helped disease B. (I was fortunate to publish a few papers undergrad, related to this link, which i brought along to show in case they had further questions, which most of the time they did not). I didnt go into detail "how" i found this link (western blot, pulse-chase experiments), just explained more about this link and its application in broader picture

Again, dont worry details, just big picture...most of the time you have MDs interviewing you, and they do not have a good knowledge of complicated molecular details...like "nerdy" pre-meds like us

Disclaimer. I still have to get accepted, so use my advice cautiously

Hit Maker

I think if you know what the lab does generally, and what your project's goals are then you're fine. I don't think you have to be up to the nanosecond on your boss's activities unless he has a nature paper that's comes out every week. Maybe before interviews take a look at review article citations in the intro of your boss's recent publications and try explaining what you do to a friend with some science, but who doesn't knwo what you do (without boring them).