Credit for Research

If you wish to carry out research for credit in the ME department, here are the steps to take:

1. Find a faculty member to be your research mentor and instructor of record for the independent study. The faculty member must be one of our core faculty, who are listed here. You can find suitable faculty research mentors by, e.g, e-mailing professors whose research interests you, approaching professors who are teaching courses that interest you, or, in some cases, via graduate student members of their research groups. 
2. Having met with the faculty member of interest, if they agree to sponsor your research units and if you have both agreed on a suitable research topic and scope, you next need to decide on the following:
   1. Do you want to use the research credit to count towards your ME technical elective credit? If so, you must take it for graded credit. If you don’t need it to count towards technical elective credit, P/NP is acceptable. 
   2. If you need/want graded credit and have senior standing, you may choose between ME H194 and ME 196. If you want/need graded credit and don’t have senior standing, you will need to take ME 196. Both ME H194 and ME 196 can be taken either for a grade or P/NP. If you don’t need/want graded credit, ME 199 is also an option.
   3. Decide on the number of units of credit. One unit is notionally equivalent to an average of three hours of effort per week throughout a 14-week semester. Up to three units of graded credit can be used towards ME technical elective requirements during your career at Berkeley. You can take more or fewer than 3 units of research over your time at Berkeley, but only 3 units can count as TE credit.
3. Once the above have been decided, send an e-mail to Patrick Civello, cc’ing your faculty mentor/instructor of record, with the following details:
   1. Which course number you wish to enroll in
   2. For how many units
   3. Which semester (or summer)
   4. Name of faculty mentor
   5. If choosing ME 196 or ME H194, whether you want to take it for a grade or P/NP

End-of-semester requirements:

• If taking research for a grade, a written report will be due to your faculty mentor at the end of term. The format, length etc will be agreed with your faculty mentor. 
• Whether taking research for a grade or P/NP, a short (e.g. 1 paragraph), non-confidential abstract describing work undertaken should be e-mailed to Patrick Civello at the end of the term.