My Undergraduate Research Experience
In my degree program, we had a GPA module named “Research Project (CH4070)” contributed 2 credits from a total of 135 GPA credits. In semester 6, a list of research project titles with supervisors was provided and the student was able to select a topic according to his/her preference. However, it was conducted on a first-come-first-serve basis due to the limitations of the number of students per lecturer/project. Students also had the freedom to decide on their project and discuss it with a lecturer for being his/her supervisor. However, it should be an acceptable research problem. My research project was about “Fermentation of Morinda citrifolia (noni) fruit juice” and my supervisor was the former Head of the Department, Dr. (Mrs.) Sanja Gunawardena. I pay my sincere gratitude to her for guiding and advising me and my research partner (Eng. Thushitha Chandrasiri) even in her busy schedules. My research project consisted of two main objectives.
- Part 1: we focused on variations of antioxidant capacity and total phenolic content of noni juice with the production method.
- Part 2: we monitored how the physical properties changed during the traditional fermentation of noni juice and their correlations with antioxidant capacity.
Eng. Diunuge Buddhika Wijesinghe and Eng. Gunindu Jayawardena
helped us a lot in designing and preparing the monitoring setup. Furthermore, I
am thankful to Prof. P. G. Rathnasiri who was our reviewer and gave us good
suggestions and advice which were useful to improve our research and to Prof.
Mahinsasa Narayana who provided computer facilities for our monitoring setup. I
am also grateful to the technical officer and the lab attendant in our lab who
supported us during experiments.
- Selection of the Research Topic
In my department, the most common practice is that the supervisor provides the research topic. But, if the student has a good research problem or research idea, our lecturers are ready to accept them. In that case, the supervisor examines factors like the value of research, scope, practical scenarios like the researchability with existing resources, time constraints, etc. In some degree programs, I have heard that student decides on what he/she would do in their undergraduate research project. Therefore, it always depends on the requirements and procedures of your degree program. When selecting a research topic, identification of research gaps from the current literature is really important and time-consuming. After continuing the search, reading papers, digging more into the respective research area, and brainstorming the ideas will be valuable to identify a good research problem and that skill is improved with the practice for some time.
- Challenges I Faced
Doing a research study as an undergraduate or even as a postgraduate student consists of a huge learning cycle, and it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to reach the destination. Thus, being patient and persevering are really needed to overcome the challenges during the research project. I made/make mistakes during the research studies and learn many things by correcting them. However, the supportive community can be helpful to us in many such situations. In my case, I got support from my supervisor, peers, seniors, lab technicians and lab attendants. When I first entered the research world in semester 3, reading and understanding a research paper was a very novel and challenging thing. However, with some effort, I was able to familiarize myself with the general structure of a research paper and understand how the flow of research is explained in a proper way. My supervisor for that project encouraged me to read more papers and gather more information. After that, when I started my final year research project, I had many challenges in the research planning and design stages. Designing experiments that had some time concerns, doing experiments independently while reducing human errors, purchasing the required chemicals/ sensors/ other materials needed for experiments, utilizing the limited resources/ instruments in the department, and experiencing long delays in the arrivals of analytical grade chemicals from foreign companies were some arduous but indeed progressive tasks I involved during my undergraduate research study. Be patient and go smoothly! Everything will be connected and completed if you do not lose hope. In difficult situations, I often get advice and guidance from my supervisor and one of my seniors. Their experiences were certainly useful to me to design and prepare my experimental setups properly. Apart from that, when I got some specific research problems, I posted questions in ResearchGate to get some answers from the researchers who were in the same research field. Reaching out to experienced researchers and seeking their support is essential to newbies like us. In my opinion, that is how every researcher is built into an expert.