FAQ’s

What do the MURA's do?
Here is a list of typical things the MURAs do during the semester:
  • Answer questions about research and available research opportunities
  • Answer questions about the CS department
  • Answer questions about getting summer research opportunities
  • Host different workshops and talks related to research
  • Send out a monthly newsletter with information about research opportunities, events they are holding, and general updates. If you haven't received a newsletter and want to get it, you can contact us at mura@cs.brown.edu
  • Hold weekly office hours (find our hours and timings here)

When is the right time to start? It's never too early or too late to get involved in research! Each lab is different, so we encourage you to reach out to professors directly if you're interested in joining their group. If you want more guidance with that, we're here to help.


What prerequisites do professors expect me to know? With different professors, projects, and 'roles' come very different expectations!

In our list of active opportunities, there is a column of what a role is expecting, which is more concrete and tailored to the specific research positions recruiting now.

If you are going the route of asking a professor directly, on the department site, we tried to keep up-to-date the general prerequisites needed in order to be able to start research with them. While the list is not extensive, you can see the highly varying range of expectations for each professor. We would also recommend trying to find their personal website and seeing if they have any more updated prerequisites listed there (and sometimes there are secret words you must include in your email in order to prove you have done so).

Additionally, while you might not have experience in a field right now, going to a lab meeting will be the best way to know if your current experience is enough for the current projects and to learn what the expectations will be when applying in the future!

Our motto (that you might know from other sources) is that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. So, even if you go and find out projects at this time are not be available, there could be some in the future, especially as you grow your skillset, so don't be discouraged!

How many hours should I expect to work on research during the school year?
Good question! Expectations typically vary across research groups and projects, but 10-15 hours is a generally good estimate.

Professors and Graduate students are also typically understanding of how hectic undergraduate class workloads can become, especially around midterm and finals periods, so don't worry about asking for a break from research if and when you need it!

Let it be known that the more work you put into a research project, the more you will get out of it! These positions are ways in which you can truly grow and show others what you can achieve. Many professors really encourage students to work with them for at least a year (especially if you want to co-author a paper), but this is professor-dependent as well.