Glialink

Who even does research, anyways?

In the spring of 2025, I was a Computer Science student at Brown hunting for summer research. Just like everyone else, I was handed a 50-page Google Doc listing every professor taking research assistants that summer, including a blurb of what they were looking for. At first I could not even scroll to the bottom of the page; the Google Doc froze due to too many active users.

Eventually I dug through the ancient scroll of text blurbs and hyperlinks. On the way I saw many opportunities that interested me and could leverage my technical skills, but I would have never seen had I Ctrl-F'd all the way to "Computer Science."

With a little bit of networking and a lot of luck, I was offered one such role - a research grant to work in a developmental psychology lab over the summer.

"Why are you working in a psychology lab? How is that going to help your CS degree?" — My mother

Good question, Mom. My experience in psychology research built me into an even better engineer. In fact, a lot of the skills I learned that summer, I would put to use fixing the research recruitment process. When I sat down and reflected on how the process went, I ended up asking myself one question.

Why does getting into research feel so hard?

We started with a hunch: the "market" for science was broken. We interviewed students, PIs, and Biotech CEOs to move from hunches to hard data.

We had many interviews with industry experts.

There, I saw the other side: Lab Managers were sifting through 50-page stacks of resumes, struggling with funding, and lacked the modern technology needed to attract and select the best collaborators.

Their frustrations revealed a deeper opportunity. It wasn't just about student jobs; it was about underutilized capacity.

"Many labs face grant cancellations yet own expensive equipment and expert personnel whose availability goes under-exploited."