The conventional way for an undergrad to apply to the research is here:

https://spinlab.me/contact/

FRIB HR Student Hire Form

The model for undergrad research participation and expectations are described more fully below. My goal for the undergrad is to learn enough about what “real” research is like to make an informed decision about applying to grad school. The benefit that the group accrues is the opportunity to improve communication skills, to improve time management skills, to improve other general soft skills that need be demonstrated when applying to jobs after grad school, and to “give back.”

Our model for undergrad participation has two components:

1. Work with a graduate student. This involves coordinating with them directly in terms of schedules. The weekly task varies depending on the present phase of the project: design, procurement, fabrication, assembly, testing, commissioning, experiments, simulations, data analysis. This is where the “hands-on” experience comes into play.
2. Work on your own. This is typically a software-based simulation or analysis task. This involves learning Python or ROOT and then calculating something. The task is independent and allows considerable flexibility on scheduling.

I expect undergrads to do both of the above with a split that varies from week to week, month to month, depending on the phase of the project. I do not assign busy work. Everything is necessary to complete a project and eventually publish a paper. If an undergrad does these two things, then they will certainly be listed as a co-author on a paper typically lead by a graduate student.

Tasks with graduate students (component 1) are time critical and need to happen right away. We do not wait for the availability of an undergrad to complete these tasks. However, undergrad participation is welcome and we make a good-faith effort to work with their schedule.

Independent tasks (component 2) are truly independent. Guidance and assistance can be requested from me and/ or the other students, but our time is limited. The undergrad will be expected to carry their own weight and learn “how to learn” on the fly. These tasks are crucial to getting our projects to publication, but they are not time critical. These tasks do need to be completed, but are typically scoped such that they only need to be completed months down the road. However, when the outputs of these are needed, the undergrad is expected to deliver. These tasks require time-management skills and self-discipline and the expectation is that there will be steady progress and not a last-minute rally to complete the task when the output is required.

Participation is group/project meetings in encouraged but optional since an undergrad’s class schedule might not allow it.

Throughout the participation in our research group, the undergrad will be expected to document their progress at regular time intervals (~weekly). This documentation and our end-of-semester one-on-one meeting provides the raw material that I use for letter of recommendation requests down the road. In addition, a final technical report is expected at the end of each mini-project. The undergrad is expected to present at UURAF or MID-SURE at MSU. After that experience, I make an honest effort to secure funding to allow the undergrad to participate in a domestic national conference or workshop to present their work to a professional audience. The undergrad is expected to apply for supplemental funding from the following sources as well:

• PA - contact Stuart Tessmer and Joyce Mathew direclty via email
• Undergraduate Research Office
• Honors College
• College of Natural Sciences

The undergrad will be expected to have a growth mindset and they will be given critical feedback and training on how to grow into a professional scientist. This includes first and foremost understanding hazards and hazard mitigation and then guidance on technical writing, on scientific presentation skills, on reading papers, on how to design and troubleshoot instruments and experiments, on expectations of professional behavior, finally, on how to extract a publishable observable with uncertainty quantification from a piece of experimental equipment. All of this training requires considerable time and investment on the part of the more senior members. We are happy to do it and it is our privilege to do so, but the undergrad has to be coachable and to step up and deliver when needed.

The time commitment is no more than 8 hrs per week. This is based on past experience from what can be reasonably expected from an undergrad as well as being responsible with our budget/funding for carrying out the work.

If it is mutually beneficial for the undergrad to join the group, then I initiate the hiring process with HR which typically takes at least two weeks.

“Describe the policies or criteria that will determine authorship for any paper(s) for which you are currently or have been working. Include how the ordering of authors will be determined.“

The standards for authorship vary from field to field and even from group to group within a subfield. For example, lab techs in biology and chemistry labs are not considered authors even though they frequently plan, carry out, and summarize experiments. I know of at least one professor in MSU PA who thinks that an undergrad should never be an author on a paper regardless of how much they have contributed. It is crucial that you get clarification about authorship as early as possible when you join a new group so that you have a clear understanding of the group culture and expectations.

Authors should have made significant contributions to the experiment (non-exhaustive list):

• building/testing the apparatus
• acquiring the data
• data analysis
• writing the paper

Note that you only have to have done any one of the above.

The arrangement of names on the author list should generally be in order of who made the largest contributions and then alphabetically.

This is to be decided by consensus. In the rare event of irreconcilable differences, the PI will decide.

However, every attempt will be made to avoid this situation.

“Describe the steps you take to make sure your work is as reproducible as possible. This would include documenting codes, maintaining lab notebooks, etc..”

We will follow the JLAB protocol: every plot in a publication has to be reproducible independently by a third party working on their own starting from our raw data and using our software & documentation.

• maintain a good lab notebook (both paper and ELOG)
• maintain archival information regarding group equipment on group wiki and shared drive on local network
• raw data stored on I:/projects/spinlab_data

1. Description of how raw data was taken including diagrams
2. Well-commented and maintained data acquisition code
3. Well-commented and maintained data reduction code
4. Well–commented and maintained data visualization code
5. Description of data acquisition, reduction, and visualization work flow