Lack of exposure to research

Question

I am a senior computer science student and I am working on my senior graduation project. My supervisor said that I should implement a job search web portal as a graduation project. But I want to make some research oriented project rather than raw coding. My supervisor insists on this because he won't have to spend time with me.

So I have decided to get involved in research myself without his help because he is not helping me. I had to register for his project class because other slots were full. He does not want to deal with students but due to school constraints he had to open this class.

I have never done research or I don't know what exactly it means. How do I start this myself ?

Answer 1

Firstly, note that, from my experience, your senior advisor isn't by any means a research advisor. What you're looking for, admirable as it may be, is a good deal more than he's signed up to provide to students. I wouldn't be too hard on him.

If you want to simple familiarize yourself with "what research entails", I recommend simply talking to people. Ask any graduate student if you can meet them for coffee and just ask them what they do all day (other than surf the web and drink coffee). Search through the faculty profiles on your department's website, find someone who looks interesting, and send an email asking to meet with them for 15-30 minutes to talk about research as a career.

If you're more interested in actually doing research, all of the above still apply, but there are two more steps. First, talk to the undergraduate coordinator for your department and try to set up a research internship over the next semester/summer. Secondly, when you're talking to faculty whose research interests you, ask whether they'd be willing to take undergraduate researchers in their lab. Doing research with them, even if just for a few hours a week, will give you the exposure you need to really understand what research entails.

Answer 2

Since you have never done research and do not know what exactly it means, I would suggest Attending Seminars and invited Talks in your school before anything else.
Try to understand how they are related to different subjects you have taken. This is a good way to start thinking about research and identifying interests. You may not like it and directly pursue a career in the industry after graduation.

• One way to fulfill your supervisor requirements and start being researcher is to look for the researchy problems associated with portal implementation. A good start in this direction is googling with "portal implementation site:.edu". Try to understand what are the problems in implementing portals and what are the current solutions to them.

This might seems difficult. But remember if you want to become researcher you have to read a lot others' work . Actually some master students they graduate by implementing some systems. At the end, doing implementation is part of many research projects in Computer Science.

• Another better approach (specially if you are interested in theoretical Computer Science) is to try to find another supervisor for your project that has research projects for undergraduates.