Hi, Cal. My name is Saleh. I'm a chemistry major student at KFUBM in Saudi Arabia. I would like to ask about how someone can find his interest in research. Is it by engaging in projects or just by reading papers? And that's it. Thanks. Well, when it comes to research as a student-- and this is obviously something that I have some personal experience with-- I think it's important that you get involved in a formal student research project.

So it's very difficult on your own as a university student to just start reading papers and to feel like you are part of the research community. So typically, most schools are going to have some sort of setup that allows students at the university level to get involved in research.

Sometimes it's formal. Here is our student research program. And you apply, and you get a grant. Sometimes it's less formal. You're just talking to specific professors and say, can I be an informal research assistant on your project? I'll just be really useful. But that is what I would recommend.

You want to be formally involved in research with a professor who knows what they're doing, that you are working and helping a actual research project that's moving towards real publication. That's where you're going to learn how things really work. That's where you're going to gain experience. That's where you're going to open up options.

The only caveat I'm going to give you, don't be picky. You're not going to be able to have a huge contribution at this level when you're brand new to research. You're not going to be the one who figures out the double helix structure of DNA. You're not going to be the one who makes Fermat's last theorem proof actually go through.

It'll probably be pretty prosaic what you're actually doing. But what you're gaining is actual exposure to how research works in connection to people doing that research. And so the interestingness of what you have available is going to increase. The very first-- I'll just say real quickly-- the very first research project I was involved with as an undergraduate, I was literally walking around campus on Dartmouth.

I had a map from the IT department of where all of the various Wi-Fi access points were. I would go to each Wi-Fi access point. I would stand under it. And I would open up a program that would sniff packets out of the air and record the signal strength at which they were receiving those packets.

And I would stand there and gather data. And I would name the file with the name of the access point. And then I'd walk down the hall to the next one. And I would do that. And then I'd walk down the hall to the next one. And then I would do that.

I mean, it was the boringest possible work. But you know what that gave us in the end? It was actually a pretty interesting data set where we could look at the signal strength of the beacons between different access points and try to figure out how those things varied based on the distance between those access points.

And ultimately, you're actually able to build an interesting model. And a paper came out of that that was called the Mistaken Axioms of Wireless-- was it Wireless Network Research, which has been cited hundreds of times. So it led to interesting places. But the very first thing I was doing was literally the most boring thing you could do.

Walking and standing still at locations, pressing a button, and then pressing that button again. So it'll be boring at first. But get involved with real projects. That's where the cool stuff comes from. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)