Application Tips from Dr. Rawan AlSubaie

Big thanks to Dr. Rawan AlSubaie for these quick and useful tips about applying for the fellowship & choosing potential PIs.

Transcript

Dr. Rawan AlSubaie:

I'm going to explain how I picked a supervisor for my application for Ibn Khaldun.

I knew that I was interested in neural circuits and especially in disease. And so I went on the website and I narrowed it down based on I narrowed the filters down based on those criteria plus my background which is in optogenetics and the specifics of the techniques I know.

After that I went into each supervisor's profile, read their description of how like what their research is based on and what their focus is. And then I went to also I looked at the lab website. I opened the people section and looked at how what different people are studying in that lab. I read a couple of papers and then I designed my application based on those variables and as well as what I would like to do. I tried to make it as creative and fun as possible while staying within the limits of what I could actually do technique wise and what I would like to do. What I would like, what kind of techniques I would like to learn in the future and wrote up my application based on those different things.

I would say look at the techniques you want to learn, look at the techniques that are being done in the lab, check out the lab's website, and the people page, and look at what different people in that lab are focusing on. And I would read the most recent papers from that lab or and especially the last reviewed paper because that will tell you the direction the lab is going in. I hope that's helpful.