Interning at Research Labs During COVID-19Answered
Are there any opportunities to intern at professor/research labs during covid-19 pandemic? Something like doing virtual work? I am interested in sciences and want to pursue the medical fields, in hope of going to a bs-md program. Would it be worth it to email professors and labs to see if I can do virtual internship for them?
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2 answers
If you're interested specifically in BS/MD programs, a better thing to do—if possible—would be to shadow doctors or volunteer in something medical-related. Schools will be looking heavily for work in medicine, not just scientific research.
I'm absolutely not saying to go volunteer in a hospital or clinic right now; for obvious reasons that would probably be a bad idea. But there's things like virtual volunteering for the American Red Cross that you might be able to do, and depending on what year you are you can try reaching out to doctors and physicians over the coming months to try and find shadowing opportunities.
In any case, I don't think there are many opportunities for research internships right now, considering that almost all universities are physically closed and, if professors are doing research, they're likely doing so either by themselves or with a small team of graduate students. You can always email them and see; there's no harm in doing so. But I wouldn't expect much on that end right now.
Something that may be of interest to you may be helping with the COVID-19 pandemic in a tangible but contact-free way, such as making face masks, tutoring kids over Zoom, etc. There are also other websites you can find online that involves a scientific project relying on citizen input due to the fact that the data pool is so large. One example that I can think of off the top of my head is Galaxy Zoo (https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zookeeper/galaxy-zoo/), where anybody can help classify galaxies. While this doesn't directly relate to researching at a lab, there are quite a few things like that online, and I would encourage you to look for any opportunities you can find. Being involved with something that allows your passions and interests to flourish during this pandemic is a great way to reach out to professors and get internship positions, especially if it relates to the research that the professor is currently involved in.
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