Advice on Finding Research Positions

Published on April 21, 2025

Look inside and outside of your academic department

What are the research interests of faculty?

Who are the post-docs and graduate students and what are the issues that they are studying? Do any of these projects align with your interests or seem interesting to work on?

  • Career advising TIP: Go to an academic department page and review the bios of faculty, grad students and post-docs.  Sometimes, post-docs and grad students are working on a project and can use some support from an undergrad with their research. This can be a great way to accumulate research skills and get mentorship.

Use the Tufts Herd alumni mentoring & networking platform  

Students can use the HERD mentoring database to look up Tufts alumni based on your research area (use a keyword search) or based on industry.  Take a look at the Tufts’ Career Center advice on networking and having career conversations

  • Career advising TIP:  Some ideas for keywords that can help you locate heads of research labs can include:  Lead Researcher, Principal Investigator, Research Associate, Program Manager, Director…etc.

Investigate labs at other schools and faculty research

When you reflect on some of the journal articles that you have read for homework assignments, who are the authors that you have most enjoyed reading? 

  • Career advising TIP: Look up where faculty and research scholars are based.  Where do these individuals engage in research?  Do they work in colleges and/or are they affiliated with specific organizations that you can reach out to? 

Learn which labs or organizations are currently posting full-time jobs    

  • Career advising TIP: Target these departments or organizations to inquire about paid or un-paid research opportunities.  Try searching your interests using a few of these websites: Handshake, HigherEdJobs.com (use Advanced Search), Idealist.org. 
  • Career advising TIP: Also, some of the major and local professional associations have job boards with opportunities for entry level roles or aspiring college students. 

See Where Jumbos Have Gotten Internships and Jobs

Students can look at a variety of Tufts Resources to get ideas of organizations where community health majors have found opportunities.  The following are a few resources to help you identify those organizations.

Volunteer at a Conference

Career advising TIP: If there is a local conference near you, there may be an opportunity to volunteer to help with logistics in order to get free attendance.  Then during the conference, you can meet and network with researchers.  Some conferences even have a discounted fee for current students without volunteering

By Malakia Silcott
Malakia Silcott Associate Director
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