It may be a stupid question to ask considering the average age of cBers here but has anyone done or is currently doing research? As in working with an organization or in a professor's lab and helping with their research?

While in college, I was working in the History of Art department. We were issued a dossier with information about certain spots of high artistic value within Barcelona that needed urgent reparations. Our job was to take pictures of the damaged parts and write reports for each one of them, as well as perform an overall analysis of the building, landmark, etc...

It was quite tiring and insanely boring, but it was good training for what supposedly should have been one of my possible jobs later on. It offered us the opportunity to put our theorical knowledge into practice, we got free entrances to museums and closed buildings and also got to play with top of the line photography equipment .

I totally recommend it.

Yeah, so like, I really hate you now. *jealous*

I would so rather do research in Barcelona with a professor (no matter how boring it is) than sit in a desk all day in some stupid school that sucks all the life out of me.

Upper-year students say they have had such great experiences doing research with a professor. Many of the professors I have as course instructors or have met are really wonderful. I suppose the biggest problem is getting a good GPA down as it's so very competitive at my university. :(

Hahaha. Oh, good, you admitted it because I was going to say that's quite boring. Interesting to learn about historic artifacts and buildings but studying them that way?.. Quite boring. I like the free entrances to museums part though. :)

That's perfect for you.

This was more of a part time job at the University than anything else, though xD;;. The research group was formed by 3 teachers and 6 last year students who were the ones to actually spend all their time in libraries and city archives.

We, the first year students did the field work because it was possibly the most time consuming part of the project that has less to do with History of Art, if that makes any sense XD;. The research group were the ones who read all the data and defined the final restoration processes for each target.

Right now, we're about to start a research project at work about breast cancer detection procedures and diagnosis methods, which will probably be much more interesting, although my involvement in it will be minimal. Talking about 3 pages of a projected 350 page dossier, here xD;;;.

Yep, I did hear that when you first start off, you're just told what to do, even if it's washing dishes. -__-;; Though, I suppose doing any menial task helps.

Hey, at least that is a lot more interesting. :D Wow, at least dossier isn't a misnomer. I'm sure those 3 pages wouldn't be useless. Where do you work now?

I work in a Hospital, as the administrative staff for the breast cancer early detection program.

What I have to write about is how does the program work in genera terms. I have nothing to do with the medical nor technical side involved.

I knew that. >_> (And you're still sending your future children to visit me, right? Good.)

Aww, shucks. I'm looking more into the medical/techinical side to research. :)

Seeing as how our Hospital needs a neurologist, an urologist, 5 family doctors, 1 doctor specialized in neuropediatry and an internal medicine specialist, management would love you if you offered to work in there XD.

Yes, I was actually recently awarded a research position for this summer at my university. I'll be working on a module for one of my professor's wireless networking simulators. Basically, I'm writing a component to help with the efficiency of the simulator.

The great thing is that we are almost definitely going to publish a paper based on the research, and I'll get to attach my name as a co-author if that happens, which will be really exciting.

I'm hoping to go into research as a career. I want to enter into a Ph.D. program after I graduate, with the goal of eventually becoming a professor of computer science. Working in the corporate sector would probably make more money, but working in academia is a lot more rewarding.

Short-term, the research is already proving fruitful. At any rate, I get access to source code and a 32-processor cluster computer, so no complaints there.