We were so lucky to be joined by a true expert in the field of STEM research today! is a Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering and Global Health, Emeritus at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He is also the Academic Director of the International Research Institute of North Carolina.

Dr. Malkin was the founder and Director of Engineering World Health and The Global Public Service Academies, organizations dedicated to improving healthcare in the developing world.

He is joining Emerging for a Power Half-Hour session today to focus on high school students interested in possibly studying STEM-related fields! 

Topics included: 

• How can High Schoolers best prepare for applying to colleges with a focus in STEM?
• Why do universities care about research?
• Are in-person lab positions better than remote lab positions?
• Can you really do research remotely? 
• Are there any things to look for in a mentor for remote research?
• Is a research summer program long enough? 
• Does it matter if I do a group program or a one-on-one program?

Additional Resources:

🔬 https://www.youtube.com/@dukeengineering

at HECA conference in D.

C., and I was immediately, immediately smitten with what Dr.

Malkin is up to and really wanted to share it with our community.

My name is Laura Barr.

I'm the owner and founder of Emerging Educational Consulting.

We provide one to one mentorship for students from the beginning to

the end of the application process.

, our motto is we're in the business of raising good humans.

And so this podcast is designed to offer information to families who

may not have access to this kind of information to help support their

students through this process.

And again, not just so that students can get into college, but because, my goal is.

to allow the process of the college admissions process to, , build kind of

moral character, academic character, intellectual character along the way.

So not for trophy hunting, but to become just smarter and wiser human beings.

So I cannot wait to hear what we are up to today.

Dr.

Melvin, I'm going to let you introduce yourself and just give us the whole scoop.

Like, who are you?

What is this all about?

And then I'm going to start asking questions that people had given us

ahead of time for you to answer.

Absolutely.

Thank you very much, Laura.

So I'm Bob, Bob Malkin.

I'm a professor of the practice of biomedical engineering and

global health at Duke University.

I'm emeritus.

Been at Duke for about 20 years now, and I'm also the academic

director of IRI, the International Research Institute of North Carolina.

And IRI is an organization working with about 17 universities, started

at Duke but now working with about 17 universities across the U.

S.

to provide research opportunities, remote research opportunities,

for high school students.

Which is a hot topic, right?

And a hot topic because I think there is a buzz on the street and college

admissions that research is a great thing for students to have under their belt,

especially students applying to kind of these top 100 schools or whatever, that

this idea of research is really valuable.

I think the reason why I was so interested in what you're up to

is Why is that something that colleges would be looking for?

And then how is, how accessible is this, are these kind of

opportunities to all students?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So let's maybe talk just a moment about what is research.

What is it that universities are looking for?

And just to be clear, when a university like Duke University or other

universities say they're looking for research or research makes a difference

to an application, what they're talking about is academic research.

Academic research, sometimes called scholarly research, is different

than maybe professional research or maybe classroom research that

a student might have already done.

Academic research is systematic, meaning there's a method section.

It uses primary sources.

So you'd be going back to original data, diaries, or journal articles,

and has a formal right style, which is both specific and citation clear.

So in other words, you can track back where the information is coming from.

And, as you can imagine, if you can meet all of those criteria, you've already

demonstrated a couple of things that universities are always looking for.

I mean, as long as I can remember in my career in academics, We've

asked for essays as part of the application process because the

ability to express yourself clearly and reason clearly is very important for

success at a competitive university.

That's part of what we expect.

As I mentioned, I'm an engineering professor and yet I expect my students

to be able to write and reason clearly.

One way to demonstrate that is to be able to do academic research.

If you publish it especially, it clearly demonstrates.

That you can reason and that you can express your reasoning In a way that's

concise and understandable to others.

Can you give me some examples of some research projects or just, I feel like

I know not that much about this, so I'm not even sure the right questions

to ask, but can you give an example of maybe a student that you've had this

summer and some work that they've done?

And maybe that fits into what types of research?

Are there strands within that idea of academic research?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a great question and I really like the way you phrased it, Laura, because

it's really important to understand that there's at least two big categories here.

One is a summer program or a program that's maybe 12 weeks

long or eight weeks long.

No matter what the program is called, an eight week or a 12 week long

program is an introduction to research.

I have graduate students in my lab who stay with me for seven years.

Wow.

So six or seven weeks is just an introduction to research.

And an introduction to research, no matter what the title of the

program is called, what you're going to end up doing is the first couple

of steps of a research project.

Identifying a question and completing a literature review.

Now there are organizations, IRI is one, which includes and offers

long term Research projects.

Those are more like a year or two minimum in length.

And absolutely, those students can do some tremendous,

groundbreaking, published research.

As an example, I have a student, who, uh, worked with in high school.

She was a high school student.

And she interviewed about 2, 000 people about their vaping habits.

And they're cold and flu symptoms as a surrogate for their immune system.

And indeed, she showed that people who vape have more frequent colds and flus.

And people who vape more have more severe cold and flu symptoms.

, so this is something she did completely remotely.

I actually never met the student until, coincidentally, she became a patient.

Freshman at Duke University.

And then I saw her on campus, but I'm doing the entire time.

We did the research together.

I never met her.

Wow.

So let's talk about that for a second.

How in today's world you can do research, even if you're not in North

Carolina, you can offer, you can have all kinds of opportunities to research.

Tell me about that, because that is a new idea.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

So just to be clear, IRI started education.

At the beginning of the pandemic.

Before the pandemic, I've been working with high school students for 20

plus years at previous universities as well, but always on campus.

, when the pandemic hit, the idea of coming on campus, at least for a

while anyways, was really challenging.

There were restrictions and it was difficult to get high

school students on campus.

So initially, I started IRI with a friend of mine, another Dookie.

, just to continue the relationships with the high school students we already

had, that's when we discovered there were thousands of students all over the

world that never had access to great laboratories, either because, you know,

they live in rural part of country or they live in a country where they can't

access a lab at all, or perhaps the local opportunities are very competitive or not

available in their intellectual interests.

So.

Schedules don't match, whatever the reason.

They didn't have access to great labs.

So, to be clear, of course, this limits what kind of research a student can do.

, not all research can be done remotely.

Some requires specialized equipment.

I would argue that at the high school level, that's not very important.

High school students should really be focusing on understanding what

is research and how is it conducted.

Not developing a specific method.

Or a specific tool, like a tunneling electron microscope, or CRISPR Cas9

gene editing, or some other specific method that they're interested in.

They should be focused on the research process at this point.

They'll have plenty of years in their future to build the method section.

So I don't feel that it's that limiting for high school students.

But, absolutely, there are limits.

Not all kinds of research can be done remotely.

It's one of those things.

, I know our practice really is thriving because of the amount of time students

can save by having a great impact in a meeting on zoom versus having

to make the drive or spend all the finances to stay on a campus.

So I think it's really exciting opportunity.

One of my questions would be, how do students go about this process?

Obviously, I think we'd love to hear more about like your specific

program, but then within that, yeah.

How do students find a mentor or how do they know they're how do

they get matched with a mentor?

, for remote research?

Yeah, this is a great question.

Let's just stay general for the moment across all remote research opportunities.

, it's really important.

The mentor is really important.

, just like as you might think for an in person laboratory experience,

a remote research experience also depends on having a great mentor.

And so it's really important that a student focus on mentor

selection, remote or in person.

In my recommendation, they should be looking for a professor.

Professor with a capital P.

A lot of people use the term professor with a small p.

At least they should be using that to mean some sort of

general instructor or lecturer.

I'm talking about somebody whose title is assistant professor, associate

professor, or full professor.

In which case they'll introduce their title as just professor.

Remember, I said it was a professor of the practice.

I'm a full professor.

, so those are the three titles that I recommend people looking for.

That's because these are folks who have a significant amount

of mentorship experience.

They'll be able to write letters of recommendation.

They'd be able to work with someone.

Maybe schedule is a little bit challenging.

They'll be able to pick up the phone and make a call to their colleague

at your target University or the University you've arrived on and are

still looking for a lab position.

to help you along.

A good mentor is somebody that you use throughout your career.

So it's really important to find a great mentor.

this matching process should include interviews.

, and students should come to the interviews prepared, meaning that

they are asking great questions.

Even for a remote research lab position, there are lots more people

who want them than can get them.

So students who comes to an interview prepared is preferred.

And by prepared, I just want to emphasize one point, a lot of people that I see

that are coming to me for a lab position in my lab, they give me their mini CV.

You know, I won this award.

I've got these grades, you know, I really don't care.

Plus, it's also a very risky strategy.

You're assuming that your little mini CV is better than all the other

mini CVs I've received that day.

I receive as many as 20 emails a day from students that want to

work in the lab during the season.

, that's a very risky strategy.

Far more important to me, and I would say to most faculty, is your

ability to express your passion.

and your interest in my lab and what we're doing in my lab.

I'm far more interested in somebody who shares an intellectual passion than

simply somebody who gets great grades.

I, you're speaking my language right now.

I think when I think about the students that I have and guiding them, I

wouldn't even be, I'm not even sure as a Consultant, like I'm sure how

to know what you are doing in your lab or how to connect them with you.

Or I certainly have all of our students are highly trained and being able to

talk about their passions and that's and articulate their intellectual curiosity.

But so talk to me more about that.

I mean, I can think of so many students would love to read.

research, but I literally do not know how to guide them even

to you or another professor.

Do they just randomly write letters to people?

And why in the world would a professor with a capital P want a

high school student hanging around?

Yeah, a couple of great questions.

So let's start with a simple answer.

, absolutely.

There are organizations like I.

R.

I.

This is what we do is the matching process.

So we take students who come to us.

With a, let's say, poorly defined passion, , or a medium defined

passion, and occasionally a great definition of their passion.

And we match them up with faculty that we've already worked with, that

we already know have great interest in working with high school students.

, that's only one way, though.

It's perfectly fine to email, , a bunch of faculty.

, I recommend, if you're doing this that way, you need to think

about about a hundred touches.

It's a hope to get two or three interviews.

This is something that can be a little challenging for high school

students to realize that it's difficult to find these positions.

It's a lot of work, so you really need to have a fairly large pool to start with.

And I always recommend when you write those emails, the first

paragraph is not about your mini CV.

It's about your passion.

Start with your passion.

Five sentences about what you're really passionate about.

, one way to do that, and this is just a tool that I find is

helpful for high school students.

Write down 20 questions, things you wish you knew about your

passion area, but you don't.

, if those questions can't be answered by Wikipedia or your

friends or whatever, you're about ready to start talking to faculty.

And the other reason this is important is we value, in that interview

stage, we value great questions.

Far more than we value great answers.

So if you come to an interview with some really great questions about

the field, then I'll be able to feel that your passion is genuine.

, you know, in terms of, you know, finding these faculty, , it is a

big challenge and I don't want to make it sound easy by any means.

But there are organizations like IRI and others that will

help with that matching process.

This might be a good time for you just to talk about, , you told, you talked to us

a little bit about how you founded, , IRI.

Can you tell us more about how it works?

Yeah, so I.

R.

I.

Is, , as I mentioned, it's a remote research opportunity.

And one of the key things to understand is one of the questions

you asked, you know, why in the world would a faculty member do this?

, in fact, our lives are full of pressures.

We have to produce papers.

We have to produce grants.

We're also teaching classes.

, and you know, our graduate students in reality are doing a lot of the research.

So why pick up a high school student who likely doesn't know the methods?

It's.

You know, may not even produce any publisher results, unlikely to

produce any grant funding results.

, the reason is, there are a lot of faculty, and I'm one of them, who feels that this

concept of where do we generate knowledge?

What is a fact?

What is something we know?

, this is under threat.

, because people simply don't understand how research is done, and how research is...

is culminated and why we publish and how we publish.

, and so we want to share this information with high school students as well as,

of course, college students, graduate students and others, but also with

high school students so they can understand how do we know something?

The problem is it's actually quite a big pain in the butt at

universities across the country.

There's a lot of paperwork to engage with the high school students.

, we also get many, many, many resumes, and we just don't have

time to filter through them.

So the idea of IRI is we provide that infrastructure for the faculty.

We help vet all the high school students.

We help with all the paperwork involved.

And so all the...

to do is open their lab to one student or two students.

And as you already mentioned, from the other side, high school students often

don't really know, , even how to form the words to describe their passion.

They're interested in something, but they're , you know, interested in

biology or chemistry, but these are huge fields with tens of thousands

of people working on them, perhaps hundreds of thousands finding the

one that's really a match for their passion can be a real challenge again.

Iri helps on that end as well.

And so it was piecing these two ideas together that formed the

organization kind of facilitate it.

Matching up faculty that want students and students that want faculty.

I'm so grateful you're doing that work, and man, you really resonate

when you start talking about, , asking, we always say in our practice, like,

I would much rather you ask the more beautiful question than have the answer.

Absolutely.

And I created, our whole curriculum is based on this idea of, like, not

imparting knowledge, but to have students have the opportunity to do

the heavy lifting of their thinking.

And I.

Really resonates with me what you said about students know, oh, I wanna major

in chemistry, or I wanna be a doctor.

But there's such little programming or support in high schools for students to

even understand what are the options.

And it really touches me that you say, , it's under threat, this idea.

Of like, what is a fact and what do we need to know?

And I just, I mean, it gives me chills, right?

So the work that you're doing is really, really important.

And I think, , one of the questions that I would have is, do you are, do things

happen in groups or is it one-to-one?

What can a student expect if they do get matched?

And what does that look like for a high school student?

Is it summer, fall?

Is it a year?

Is it, or does it just depend?

Yeah, great question.

So let's start with the individual group kind of question.

Both programs are excellent and they both can make sense for different people.

, in general, the one on one program will give you more time with

your faculty, with your mentor.

The more time you have, the better the letter recognition,

the more you're going to learn.

Probably the more you're going to accomplish, the more likely they are

to help you with those phone calls.

Be with you as a support perhaps for the rest of your life.

But typically the more expensive the program and you are working

individually, which some people don't like working by themselves,

especially remotely by themselves.

Group program is typically more economical.

However, the time is divided for the faculty.

So I might, for my groups, I do have research groups.

, you know, I might meet with three students at once.

Of course, I try to understand each one of them, but, you know, my time

is divided, and so I don't know them as well as I know the others.

, I am less likely to write it as grade a letter recommendation,

less likely to pick up the phone.

, if you do choose the group, the only thing to watch out for is make sure

that your student or your child can identify their own intellectual corner.

So they have to have some intellectual agency in the group.

Even if the entire group is researching, you know, micro, microplastic, megafauna

impact in the Pacific Ocean, fine, as long as each member of the group has

their own subtopic within that area.

, in terms of, you know, the sort of the, you know, how does it work, , for the

shorter programs, , you're going to be expecting to, either one, no matter which

one you do, you're going to be looking for things like, What is the outcome?

Typically, it's going to be a written document, either a literature

review, in the case of a short program, or a published paper.

If it is a published paper, just be sure that it's published in a peer reviewed,

archived, impact factor rated journal.

I find way too many high school students publish in private label journals.

These are journals owned by research companies or junior science journals,

and there's nothing wrong with those publications, as long as that's what

they claim on their CV, published in the Junior Science Journal of,

or the Science Fair Journal of, or Privately Held Journal of, or whatever.

Don't present those as scientific publications.

That's not what's meant by a publication at a university.

, otherwise the programs are both.

Fine.

Individual or group.

Short or long.

They meet different needs and they're all fine.

What is your, , so let me just say that back.

So not all publications are the same, and that is typically the

outcome of a research engagement, this idea that students are co

publishers, or are they writing their own publication of their findings?

Yeah, that's a great question.

And it's something for someone to consider when they're making this commitment.

, typically sort of the, , the golden ring of science.

Across all the STEM fields is first author publication.

That is, the student is the first author on the paper.

However, that means they typically need to generate original data.

That could be an effort of several years to get that done.

So you're thinking about a student who's joining a lab, at least if they want to

finish it by their application period, let's say November of their senior year.

They're joining in their sophomore year, even potentially their

freshman year, they're joining a lab.

That's a pretty long commitment.

Another option, though, is to consider being an author on a

paper, but not the first author.

So just one among many authors.

Typically, a graduate student would be first, but high school students second or

third, and then the faculty member last.

Not as impactful for a college application, but still, depending on

what story the student can relate, what their experience was, especially

if it was a transformative experience, where they really learned something.

About themselves or about the world that could still be a very powerful experience

for a student and typically takes less time Perhaps just one year two years

max How much time does it take for us?

How much time do you think it, , takes out of a student schedule weekly

or monthly to be engaged in this?

I mean, I'm thinking about some students who are sophomores who I could see

getting pretty excited about these kind of opportunities, but I'd want to be

like, well, prepare yourself on top of your college applications and your

extracurriculars and your AP and your how much do they need to add to that?

Yeah, it's a great question.

It is a significant commitment of time.

I tell people it's about an hour a week for meetings, maybe two hours, and

about five hours of homework per week.

Now, if you're doing a long term project, a year or two,

that is going to be on average.

So for sure, there's going to be periods where you have a big

sporting event, you got to go to the big tournament or the states.

Or you have a set of tests coming up and you just can't meet that week.

That's going to happen to everybody.

And many students are going to take, you know, a month, four

weeks off, split up among the year.

But, on average, it is still a significant commitment.

An hour a week in meetings, maybe two.

And five hours of homework.

That's a huge commitment.

That's, I mean, that's interesting because I think a lot about this and I

don't want this to come across in any way, like unkind, but there are so many

opportunities and sometimes I wonder, am I guiding my students to a kind of pay

to play program where it's like going to look good on their application or am I

genuinely guiding them, , to pursue their intellectual passions and in this case.

No one's gonna, like, you got to be in it to want to do this.

Yeah, that's a lot of time, right?

It's a lot of time, and it's not just a six week program where you finish

it up, and then you get a, you know, letter of recommendation for doing

research, not publishing anything.

It's, it just feels like your program is the real deal.

So, I just, I'm so happy that we're able to engage in this conversation.

Do you have opinions about, like, the...

The true value in college admissions process.

Is there?

Is it?

Do you know the scoop?

Is it easier?

Do people?

I'm not even formulating this correctly.

do admissions really care about research?

Do we care if they care?

What's your take on that?

Yeah.

So I think I mentioned to you, Laura, when we met at TECA that

they did two years on the admissions committee at Duke University when

I was the associate director of undergraduate studies and engineering.

Right.

Right.

And so I got to see thousands of incredible students,

just great applications.

Unfortunately, we can't accept all of the great applications.

, research can make a difference.

In my opinion, from what I saw, the short term experiences, which are

four weeks or six weeks, and I've seen some as short as one week,

they really come across like a camp.

, if a student has an incredible story, whether it occurred at camp, or it

would occur one day on the beach, or...

In their research program.

I think the incredible story can have power, but keep in mind, that's the

experience that they're relating.

It's not really anything to do with their camp.

I don't think the simple fact that they went to camp at, you know, X

university for four weeks really has any impact on their applications at all.

In fact, , students who make a serious commitment of a couple of

years, , who can really discuss the research at a level of detail that.

You know, can be discerned from others, , and publish it.

Absolutely.

There is, I think, some, , misconception that somehow admissions doesn't know,

so you can just publish in any junior science journal and the admissions

department is going to accept that.

I can tell you, at least in the case of Duke University,

that is absolutely not true.

The admissions department engages faculty like myself and others, specifically

for the purpose of determining whether this particular paper, amongst other

things as well in an application, Have or has merit and this is our job.

This is what we do for a living is publish papers.

So we know exactly which journals are really ones which have or

should have, , work of significance.

So demonstrating that a student has a commitment, is able to make a long term

commitment, has the intellectual drive and passion and express themselves,

all the things that we're looking for.

In a college application, can you tell us some names of some of the

research projects are some of the things that students have studied

this past with you recently, just to get us all excited intellectually.

Absolutely.

So I've got a student who's just finishing up a really great

paper on meter dose inhalers.

These are little things that Children sometimes take to school.

They stick them in their mouth and pump the top of it, and it

gives them a little burst of albuterol or some other medication.

And it's supposed to help them with asthma.

Asthma is one of the biggest problems around the world, also in the U.

S.

But around the world as well.

However, there is actually very little data on whether those kids

know how to use those inhalers.

So she got, she devised a small program for a smartphone, , and got the moms

to record their kids using the device.

And from that, she could figure out how often they actuated it, whether their

breathing was appropriate and whatever, and in fact found that, 35 out of

36 kids did not know how to use their inhaler correctly and also was able to

get some chart access so she could look at their medical records and determine

that in fact, those that use their device.

more correctly, have better outcomes.

They sleep longer, they have better grades in school and things like that.

So this is really groundbreaking work.

She's actually proposing now to start a company to develop training

aids for little kids because, you know, you can't really expect a

little kid to read the manual.

And, you know, a six year old or seven year olds are going to read the manual

and then follow the instructions.

So she's proposing to develop a little game that kids use with a game.

Well, it would look like a meter dose inhaler, but it would be a game.

And then they would win the game by using their meter dose inhaler correctly.

Wow.

This would make a huge impact on kids with asthma.

, so this is a big, big project that's really making a difference.

Wow.

That is so neat.

I am so grateful that we had a chance to talk today.

I can't believe 30 minutes just flew by.

We have one minute left and I want to spend that time just giving

you so much gratitude, not only for showing up for me today.

I feel kind of super honored about that, but also just for

the work that you're doing.

I mean, the opportunity and your commitment to high schoolers.

I am someone who truly believes that the investment that you're giving

Now we'll have a huge impact and that our work of raising citizens

is crucial in our society right now.

So thank you for your service and I can't wait to have my students apply.

Looking forward to it, Laura, and it's been my pleasure.

Thank you very much for your time.

Have a beautiful day.

Thank you.