The BISS Fellowship  /  Writing to a Lab

A Fellowship field guide

Writing to a lab.

Almost every research placement starts the same way: an email to a professor who has never heard of you. It is a real skill, it is nothing like a cold email in business, and most students get it wrong in the same three ways. Here is how to write it, annotated line by line.

This is the academic one. If you are writing to someone in business rather than a lab, read The Thoughtful Networker instead — its advice is nearly the opposite of this page’s, and deliberately so. If somebody has offered to introduce you to a lab, you are in luck and you want The Art of the Intro; come back here for the email itself, which is the same either way. One more thing: PIs are people and they differ. What follows is a strong default, built from what a working lab head, Gal Haspel, actually told us. It is not a rulebook.

The art of the intro Stage 1 of 8

Stage 1

Find the labs worth writing to.

You: SofiaA shortlist of labs

Nearly every research placement starts with an email to someone who has never heard of you. That is not a failure of your network — it is simply how labs are joined, at every level, including by professors. So the question is not whether to cold-email. It is which ten people to write to.

Start from a paper, not from a name. Find something you have actually read and found interesting, then look at who wrote it. Follow its reference list. Look at who cites it. Your own department’s website is a good place to begin, because being in the same city is worth more to a lab than you would guess.

Somewhere near what you half-understand already. A paper you can follow most of the way is a better target than one you cannot follow at all. You need to be able to say something true about it in Stage 3.
Smaller groups, not only famous ones. In a very large lab a summer student is supervised by whoever is free. In a smaller group the PI might actually be the person teaching you, which is worth far more than the name on the door.
Read the lab’s own page first. Many say plainly whether they take students, and some give exact instructions for what to send. Following those instructions is the easiest possible way to stand out.
Not one email at a time. Write to something like ten labs over a few weeks. Most will not reply, and that is the normal arithmetic rather than a verdict on you.
Tap the highlighted phrases for the coaching notes.
Stage 1 of 8

Stage 2

Work out what to call them.

You: SofiaTwo minutes on the lab website

The person who runs a lab is its principal investigator, usually shortened to PI: they hold the grants, they decide who joins, and the email is going to them. That is the job. What you need before you write is the title.

This sounds like etiquette trivia and it is not. Business email has drifted to first names, so students carry that habit across and open with “Hi Lena” or, worse, “Dear Ms Marchetti”. In academia the title is still doing real work, and getting it right costs you two minutes on a web page.

Where to look. The lab’s own “People” page, the department staff directory, or their university profile. The title is nearly always printed next to the name.
When in doubt, “Dear Dr Surname”. Essentially every PI holds a doctorate, so Dr is never wrong and never presumptuous — including for a full professor. It is the safe floor, and you should use it rather than guess upwards or downwards.
Never Mr or Ms. It reads as not having looked at all — and used on a woman running a lab it reads as a good deal worse than that, because it is a mistake she gets and her male colleagues do not.
Not “Dear Sir/Madam”, and not “Dear Professor” with no name. Both say the same thing, which is that this email was sent to forty people.

Two more things worth thirty seconds each while you are on that page: check the spelling of the name, including any accent in it, and check which part is the surname — plenty of directories list people surname first, and an email opening with their first name preceded by “Dr” is a distinctive way to start.

Stage 2 of 8

Stage 3 · the one that matters

Write the email.

You: SofiaThe PI: Dr Marchetti

Here is where academic email parts company with every piece of cold-outreach advice you have read. In business the rule is be short, and cut the paragraph about yourself. Here the email is longer, and the longest paragraph is not about you at all — it is about her work.

That is not flattery and it is not a trick. She is deciding whether to spend a summer of supervision on a stranger, and the only evidence available is whether you have read anything of hers and thought about it. Three paragraphs, in this order.

The shape of the email

  • The ask. One sentence, maybe two.Say what you want in the first line, plainly. She should never have to read to the bottom to find out why you wrote.
  • Why this lab. The longest paragraph.A specific paper, what in it caught you, and what you would want to understand. This is the paragraph that gets you a reply.
  • Who you are. Three sentences.Year, what draws you, and what you honestly can and cannot yet do. Short. Your CV is not the argument here.

Write it once, then adapt it ten times. The first and third paragraphs barely change between labs. The middle one has to be written fresh every time, because it is the only part that proves you are not sending the same email to everybody — which you nearly are, and which is completely fine as long as the paragraph about their work is genuinely theirs.

Stage 3 of 8

Stage 4 · the common failure

The email that gets deleted.

The same emailgone wrong

A PI running a mid-sized group gets these constantly, and most are the same email with the name changed. They are not deleted for being badly written. They are deleted because nothing in them could only have been sent to this person.

Here is the version that usually arrives. Every line of it is well-meant, and that is rather the point.

No “Dear Sir/Madam”, and no title you did not check.
No “I find your research fascinating” without naming which research.
No passionate, hard-working, fast-learning, valuable asset. Everyone writes it, so it carries no information.
One paper, one honest reaction to it, one clear ask, three sentences about you. That is the whole trade.
Stage 4 of 8

Stage 5

When they reply, follow their lead.

The PI: Dr MarchettiYou: Sofia

A reply arrives. Before you answer it, read how it is written — how she opened it, whether she used your first name, how she signed off. You guessed in Stage 3 because you had nothing to go on. Now you do not have to guess: she has just shown you.

So: match what you see. Here are the same two words of advice for the two emails she might have sent.

If she wrote

“Dear Sofia, … Best regards, Dr L. Marchetti”

You keep writing “Dear Dr Marchetti” — not just in this reply but in every email after it, until she signs off differently. Formality here is not coldness. It is the house style, and matching it costs you nothing.

If she wrote

“Hi Sofia, … Cheers, Lena”

You write “Hi Lena”. Answering a first-name, one-line email with “Dear Professor Marchetti” is its own kind of mistake: it is stiff, it is a little deaf, and it quietly signals that you are not reading what is in front of you.

Then reply the same day. A PI who invited you in and heard nothing for a fortnight has already filed you under not really serious. Offer two or three concrete times rather than “whenever suits you”, and if the lab is in your city, offer to come to her.

Two lines, thanking her. It costs nothing and it is occasionally how you find the lab that says yes.

Stage 5 of 8

Stage 6

When they don’t reply, follow up twice.

You: SofiaThe PI: Dr Marchetti· a week later, then one more

Silence is the normal case, and it is worth understanding what you are up against. A PI is teaching, writing grants, reviewing papers, running a group and answering a great deal of student email. Your message was not rejected. It was buried.

So: one follow-up after about a week, and if nothing comes of that, one more a week later. Then stop, and write to the next lab. That is two more attempts than most students make, and still well inside the bounds of polite.

And then, genuinely, don’t despair. Write to the next lab on your list. Most students who end up somewhere good got there on the third or fourth email, not the first.

Stage 6 of 8

Stage 7

Turn up having read the paper.

You: SofiaThe PI: Dr Marchetti

Usually twenty minutes in her office, sometimes a walk round the lab, occasionally a call. You got here on the strength of one paragraph about her paper, so the one thing you cannot afford is to arrive having read no more of it than you had when you wrote.

Sofia Almqvist & Dr MarchettiTue 14 May, 10:00–10:20 · Dept. of Neuroscience, room 4:12 · invite sent by you

Bring your best to the room

  • Read the paper properly.Not the abstract. The whole thing, twice, with the figures. You will not follow all of it and that is fine — arrive knowing precisely which part lost you, and ask about that.
  • Ask what the lab is working on now.Published work is two years old. What is on the bench today is what you would be doing, and almost nobody asks.
  • Be honest about what you can't do.Overstating a technique buys you a fortnight and costs you the placement. "I haven't done that, but I'd like to learn" is the correct and expected answer at your stage.
  • Ask the practical questions.Who would supervise you day to day, what a first project might look like, whether it is paid or credited. These are normal questions and asking them reads as serious, not grabby.
One book, if you are seriously considering a lab The first few chapters of At the Bench: A Laboratory Navigator (Kathy Barker, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press) are the best short account of what a research group is actually like from the inside — how labs are organised, how the people in them talk to each other, and what is expected of the newest person in the room. Worth reading before you commit a summer.
Stage 7 of 8

Stage 8 · the step people skip

Say thank you, and keep the thread.

You: SofiaThe PI: Dr Marchetti

Write the same day, whatever the answer was. If it was yes, confirm the practical things in writing so nobody is relying on memory in three months. If it was no, thank her anyway — briefly, with no trace of disappointment in it.

That second one matters more than it looks. Academia is small, people move between groups, and a PI who turned you down this year may well be the person who takes you next year, or who mentions your name to the colleague down the corridor who has funding you did not know about.

Stage 8 of 8

The whole arc, at a glance

Eight stages, one principle: show that you actually read something.

Everything else on this page is in service of the middle paragraph of one email.

Your move

Now put it to work.

A cold email is the fallback. A warm one is better, and that is what the Fellowship is for — tell us the field you're chasing and we'll look for someone in the BISS community who already knows the door.

Tell us what you need Read: the same thing, outside academia