Research opportunities
Undergraduate research in biology
Biology labs take undergraduates they can trust with shared equipment, live organisms and other people's samples. Your first weeks will likely mean making media, washing glassware and keeping cultures alive, and doing that carefully earns you a project. Before you email, decide which kind of biology you want: wet lab, field or computational.
- Typical first task
- Media prep, glassware and sample processing
- Before bench work
- Lab safety training, plus biosafety if needed
- Schedule that works
- Half-day blocks, not scattered hours
- Where labs sit
- Biology, medicine, agriculture and ecology
Wet lab, field or computational biology
Many labs combine two of these, such as a group that samples fish in the field and sequences their DNA on campus. The daily work differs a lot:
- Wet lab: molecular and cell biology, microbiology, genetics. You pipette, run PCR and gels, and look after model organisms such as yeast, fruit flies, zebrafish or mice.
- Field: ecology, evolution and conservation. You collect samples, run surveys and identify species, often over a summer field season away from campus.
- Computational: genomics and bioinformatics. You analyze sequencing or ecological data in R, Python and the command line.
Your first weeks in a biology lab
Training comes first: general lab safety, biosafety if you will handle microorganisms or human samples, and animal care courses if the lab uses vertebrates. Canadian universities generally require WHMIS training as well.
Then come the support tasks that keep a lab running: preparing media and buffers, autoclaving, passaging cell lines, flipping fly stocks and processing samples. A grad student or technician watches how carefully you do these, and how well you record them, before handing you an experiment.
Plan your time in blocks. A culture needs attention on schedule, an incubation runs as long as it runs, and a PCR followed by a gel can fill an afternoon. Tell a professor which half-days you have free, not just a weekly total.
Skills worth mentioning
Name techniques, not qualities. "I ran PCR and gels in my genetics lab" says more than "I'm detail-oriented."
- Lab courses by name, with the techniques used: sterile technique, PCR, microscopy, dissection
- A time you troubleshot a failed experiment
- For field labs: species identification, a driver's licence, first aid
- For computational labs: R or Python and any statistics course
Where to find biology labs
Much biology research happens outside the biology department. Search biochemistry, molecular genetics, microbiology, immunology and physiology, often in the faculty of medicine, plus research institutes at affiliated hospitals. Agriculture faculties run plant, animal and soil science labs, and ecology work also lives in forestry and environmental science. Because Prof Insider searches across departments, a lab filed under medicine or agriculture still shows up.
Example email to a professor
The names and papers are made up. Swap in your own details and a real paper from the professor's page.
Subject: Third-year biology student interested in your yeast heat stress research
Dear Professor Adeyemi,
I'm in third-year biology at [your university], and your 2025 paper on how yeast cells clear damaged proteins after heat shock caught my attention, especially the finding that older cells recover more slowly. I'd like to learn the single-cell imaging you used to track that.
My cell biology and genetics lab courses covered yeast transformation, PCR, gel electrophoresis and fluorescence microscopy, and I've completed [your university]'s lab safety training, so that step is already done.
I'm free Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Friday mornings, and I'm happy to start with media prep and strain maintenance while I learn your protocols. Could I volunteer in your lab next term? My resume is attached.
Thank you, Priya Natarajan BSc Biology, Year 3
Common questions
How do I get into a biology research lab as an undergrad?
Email professors whose recent papers interest you, name the techniques you already have, and say which blocks of time you can give. Many students start on support tasks and move to their own project after a term or two.
Do I need lab experience to get a biology research position?
No. Most undergraduates arrive knowing only what their lab courses taught them, and the lab trains the rest. See how to start with no experience.
Should I choose wet lab or computational biology?
Choose the one closest to what you want to do next. Wet lab work prepares you for bench-based graduate research and suits many pre-med students, while computational skills carry over to genomics, ecology and data jobs. Plenty of students add the other later.