An Honors Thesis is a project that you collaborate in designing with a faculty member, in this case Dr. Lampinen. You take the primary responsibility for conducting the project under Dr. Lampinen's supervision, analyzing the data and preparing a report (i.e. Thesis). After the thesis is written a committee of faculty members reads the thesis and you defend it. A defense is simply an opportunity for you to present the results of your thesis orally and for the faculty members on your committee to ask you questions about the thesis to see if you know your stuff.

An Honors Thesis is a major project and requires a good deal of work but is also a great experience and a tremendous resume booster. It can be a lot of fun too because you're working on a project that you played a major role in developing. And it's real science, not a classroom exercise or a demonstration.

In our lab we expect that a reasonable Honors Thesis will report the results of 2-3 conceptually related experiments and will be between 25-40 pages in length. Dr. Lampinen will only supervise an Honors Thesis if he believes the project has enough merit to potentially be publishable in a peer reviewed scientific journal. Thus an added benefit of conducting an Honors Thesis with Dr. Lampinen is the possibility of being listed as an author in a peer reviewed scientific publication. Again, this is a great resume booster.

Every year Dr. Lampinen supervises between two and three Honors Theses. These slots are awarded on a competitive basis and not everyone who desires to do a thesis can be accepted. As a rule a position as a thesis student is only given to students who already have experience working as research assistants in the lab. If you are not already in Lampinen's Lab you should join the lab as a research assistant in the Fall of your Junior year (if possible) in order to gain the necessary experience. There's even a handy online application to make it easy to apply for a Research Assistant position in the lab.

The students who are selected as thesis students are self-starters, willing to take initiative, are competent researchers who are capable of handling the day to day details of running a major project, who work well with others and who show leadership abilities. Thesis students are not just in charge of their own project, they are leaders within the lab as a whole.

We hope that this description doesn't scare you off! Doing a thesis takes a lot of work, but it's worth it. If you are interested in the possibility of doing a thesis in your Senior Year, you should feel free to talk to Dr. Lampinen about it. Note that you do not need to have a fully worked out idea before you talk to Dr. Lampinen. The ideal thesis is one that fits in with the work the lab is already doing but that pushes that work in a new and interesting direction. So the best way to develop an idea is to express your interest to Dr. Lampinen and sit down with him to discuss how your interests and his interests might be combined into a thesis idea.