General Policies
You may carry out your senior project under the direction of any faculty member affiliated with the Biochemistry program. Your committee must include at least one other member of the Biochemistry faculty and that person should be in a different department from your first reader. Depending upon the department in which your primary advisor is based, the procedure for choosing second readers varies slightly. However, students can generally expect to know who their second readers will be by late in the spring semester of their junior year.
In most cases, students carry out their senior research project in the lab of a Biochemistry faculty member based in the same department as that in which the Junior Seminar was based. However, if you and a Biochemistry faculty member housed in another supporting department work out a project of mutual interest, you may register for that person’s section of the Biochemistry Senior Project (Biochem 600 & 610).
Brainstorming about Projects
Specific Guidelines
The specific schedule, format guidelines, and expectations for the senior project differ slightly, depending upon the department in which your senior project advisor is based. However, in keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of the Biochemistry major, your written and oral presentations are expected to span disciplinary boundaries, particularly with respect to effectively communicating with the member of your faculty committee who is based in a department other than your first reader.