The full guide: how to find labs and choose the right one for your PhD

Why the process of finding labs and choosing the right one for you is very important

Finding and choosing labs is a necessary process that anyone wanting to pursue a PhD must go through. If you are applying to PhD programs in the UK, most programs require you to apply with a PI supervisor in mind or with a PI supervisor directly supporting your application. PhD programs in the US, and some in the UK, are rotations-based. This means you apply to PhD programs where there are multiple labs you would be interested in working in, and if admitted, you eventually have to choose a few labs to do your initial rotations (working in each lab for a few months) before committing to one for the rest of your PhD.

I believe finding and choosing the correct lab to do your PhD in is critical for having a successful and enjoyable career in science. During a PhD degree, you can do a lot to propel your scientific career forward, such as doing cool research and publishing good science, learning lots of useful experimental techniques and other skills, networking with the right people, etc. Being in the right lab can make all of this much easier, helping you achieve a more successful career. Unfortunately, being in the wrong lab can also make all of this much harder. Furthermore, during a PhD, you will spend at least 3 years in the same research lab. Therefore, finding the correct lab for you will not only help you develop as a successful scientist and professional but will also allow you to enjoy as much as you can your time as a PhD student. From personal experience, I can say that having done a year-long undergraduate research placement in the right lab, one that I enjoyed working in and where I was able to thrive, helped me tremendously to secure a fully-funded PhD position in the University of Cambridge.

Unfortunately, finding and choosing labs to apply to for your PhD can be difficult, tiresome and even overwhelming. If you are like me and don’t have very specific research interests, the number of labs you can apply to becomes very large, and therefore, narrowing down to a reasonable number of labs to contact or to a reasonable number of PhD programs to apply to can get hard. If you have very specific research interests and therefore already have a reasonable number of labs in mind to contact or to apply to, it is still hard to figure out whether a lab is the right one for you or not.

Therefore, I decided to write a detailed guide on how I would approach finding and choosing labs for a PhD if I were doing the process again. I had to find labs to apply to when I was applying to PhD programs in the US and UK this time a year ago, but also when I was finding and cold emailing PIs in late 2022 and early 2023 to find a lab to do my undergraduate research placement in. Both of these times, I sought advice from people at all levels of academia – undergraduate placement students, PhD students, postdocs, PIs, etc. I would heavily recommend seeking as much advice from others as well. I have crafted this guide considering all the advice I was given and my own learnings. 

Firstly, how can you find labs that you could then apply to for your PhD?

If I had to apply to PhD programs again, I would first try to make a list of the labs I am interested in. If you are applying to PhDs in the US, this process would be less time-consuming. As most PhD programs in the US are rotations-based, you don’t need to make a concrete list of PIs you want to work with. In fact, you are often told in the website of the rotations-based PhD programs that you don’t need to contact PIs expressing your interest in working with them before applying. If I were applying to US PhD programs again, I would look at all PhD programs in the research areas I am interested and in universities and cities I would see myself attending and living in, and then check if there are at least 3 researchers I am interested in working with on each program (more later on how to use resources online to get to know a lab better).

If I were applying to PhD programs in the UK that are not rotations-based and where you have to apply with a supervisor in mind or with a supervisor directly supporting your application, I would definitely have a different approach. Here, the PI and his/her lab take a central role, not the PhD program. The way I like to see it is as if the PhD program is a vehicle to get to do your PhD in the lab of a specific PI. Some universities might centre the applications around PhD programs, while others centre applications completely around the PIs. Anyways, you have to focus on the PI when doing your research and deciding where to apply because, when you apply with a PI supervisor listed on your application, this most likely will be the lab you will end up doing your PhD in if admitted to the program. This process can then work in several ways. For example, you can look at PhD programs of universities you are interested in and in research areas you are interested in, and their websites should either give a list of supervisors available or say which departments/faculties/institutions you can choose PIs from as supervisors, or something along those lines. However, if for some reason, you also have specific labs and PIs already in mind you would like to work with, you just have to work out which PhD programs you have to apply to.

One thing I want to mention is that I personally wouldn’t exclude from my list labs that do not fit exactly my research interests. This is because there are many positive things a lab can have other than its research areas that would make it worth it doing your PhD in it. I will delve more into this later, but what do I mean by this? Of course, if you are not interested at all in the research of a lab, don’t put it in your list. However, let’s say I find a lab that has a great reputation in the scientific community, publishes great science in great journals, the PI is very nice, etc., etc., but the research area of the lab is not 100% exactly what I would like. If I still find the research interesting enough (a threshold that is very personal and will change from person to person), I would love to do my PhD in a lab like this with all these positive traits. 

How should you choose the labs to apply to for your PhD?

I will suppose that up until now, you have made a list of labs that you thought were interesting, and the way you judged this was by looking at a short description of what the lab’s research is about, found in the university’s website, the PhD program’s website, or the lab’s website. If you are applying to rotations-based programs like those that predominate in the US, this could be enough research on your part to move forward to competitively apply to the program. This is because I would argue there is not much of a point in spending lots of time doing thorough research to figure out if a lab is the right fit for you. If you are admitted into a rotations-based program, by the time you start the program, the PIs you thought were taking in students might no longer be there, the projects the PI proposed might change, your research interests might evolve, etc. Therefore, if you are currently in the process of applying to rotations-based PhD programs, the rest of the guide is not of great use right now. However, it will be of use when, if admitted and attending a rotations-based program, it is time to choose labs to do your rotations in.

This is different if you are applying to the PhD programs that require you to apply with a supervisor in mind or with a supervisor directly supporting your application. If you are accepted into the program, that is the lab you will spend your entire PhD in (most likely), so it is worth doing more research to figure out if the lab is the right fit for you before applying. So, how do you do this?

I would say there are three main ways you can acquire information on a lab:

1. Information online
   • The lab’s website
   • Social media (LinkedIn, X) of the PI (and perhaps of other members of the lab)
   • Searching the PI on PubMed, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, etc.
   • Interviews or talks on YouTube
   • I am sure I am forgetting other online sources of information you can think of
2. Talking to the PI
3. Talking to PhD students in the lab

By looking at information online, talking to the PI, and talking to PhD student(s) in a lab, you can find a lot about the lab. This will allow you to make a much better-informed decision as to whether you would be happy committing to that lab for your PhD. Now, what do you actually look for online to find more about a lab and determine if it will be the right fit for your PhD? If you meet with the PI, what can you ask? If you meet with a PhD student, what can you ask?

The three categories of information you should find out about a lab

The way I like to think about this is by dividing into three categories all the information you should find out about a PI and his/her lab:

1. What research does the lab do? Is it interesting to me?
2. What is the scientific performance and reputation of the lab?
   • This is about determining whether the lab consistently publishes solid science in good journals, as this will indicate whether you may have the opportunity to do the same.
3. How good is the lab environment? Will I enjoy my time there and achieve a lot?
   • This is all about figuring out what the lab culture is: the working conditions, how people (including the PI) get along with each other, how the PI manages his lab, etc. And based on that, deciding if that is an environment where you will thrive.

Point 1 is quite self-explanatory. This is all about trying to figure out if the research the lab does, and therefore, your potential PhD project, fits with your interests. The most obvious way to do this is to read the lab’s website, where they will have a short description of the type of work the lab does. However, I must say that I have often seen lab websites be a bit outdated, broad, or even a bit vague, and not reflect the sort of research projects and papers the lab carries out in the present. Therefore, I think the best way to find out what research a lab is currently doing and what could be your future PhD project is by talking to the PI. You can also look at the last author papers and preprints the PI has published recently, and this will give you an idea of what the research recent has been in the lab – then you can see how well it matches the website description.

Point 2 is a bit less obvious. The reason why I think the scientific performance and reputation of a lab is important is because the better the scientific output and reputation of a lab is, the better opportunities you can have, assuming the lab is one where they will help you thrive (more on that on point 3). If a lab publishes often in great journals, then you might also have the chance to do so. Publishing in good journals definitely helps if you want to pursue a career in academia. If your PI and his lab have a great reputation, any recommendation letters your PI writes for you in the future will hold more weight. If your lab is very successful at getting grants and has more money, you might be able to produce better science (e.g., you can outsource certain steps of a project, you might be able to do cooler experiments simply because you have more funding for more mice, larger next-generation sequencing experiments, novel experimental techniques, etc.). As long as the environment of the lab will allow you to reap those benefits, being in a lab with a high scientific performance, output, and reputation can be quite advantageous.

Point 3 is one that I think is quite important. This is the main reason why I said before that there are other things in a lab outside of how interesting you find their research that are very important to consider when finding and choosing labs. What is the culture in the lab, how the PI manages his/her lab, how well the PI treats students, how people get along, how much support you are given as a student, etc., can make or break your experience in a lab. For example, if you have a PI who is willing to be more flexible to satisfy students, the PI may be more likely to tailor a PhD project to suit your research interests. If you have a PI who is noticeably invested in his/her PhD students, any recommendation letters the PI writes will be noticeably better by being better tailored and genuine. So, even if a lab satisfies exceedingly well points 1 and 2, if they don’t satisfy point 3, then you run the risk of not benefiting from everything else the lab has to offer.

How do you find out all this information about a lab? And what exactly should you find out about?

As I mentioned earlier, there are three ways you can find information about a lab: online, by talking to the PI, and by talking to PhD students in the lab. With this in mind, I am now going to explain how I would approach finding out the all the information I need about a lab to help me decide if I would consider applying to it for my PhD or not.

Firstly, I will try to get as much information as I want by doing research online.

• Category 1: What research does the lab do? Is it interesting to me?
  • Read the lab website
  • Find and skim over recent publications from the PI’s lab. I.e., where the PI is a last author and where many of the other authors, particularly first authors, are from the PI’s lab.
  • For the reasons I mentioned earlier, I do think the best way to find out what a lab’s current research and what your potential PhD projects could be is by talking to the PI.
• Category 2: What is the scientific performance and reputation of the lab?
  • The Google Scholar profile of a PI can give a lot of information: the h-index, how much they are cited per year, from which publications do most of the PI’s citations come from (is it the PI’s own work or very big collaborations?). Be aware that there was an increase in citations during COVID, peaking around 2021-22.
  • You can also check how many last author publications the PI has per year, but you should take into account how big their lab is. A lab that publishes 3 times a year in a lab of 5 people is better than a lab that publishes 6 times a year in a lab of 20 people (these are invented numbers).
• Category 3: How good is the lab environment? Will I enjoy my time there and achieve a lot?
  • This one is hard to gauge by googling stuff, but one thing you can do is check if people from that lab went on to open their own lab. This is something my undergraduate placement supervisor, Professor Adrian Liston, suggested to me. He says labs where people enjoy themselves tend to have more PhD students who then go on to open their own labs. Unfortunately, if the lab’s website does not provide this information, this can be very hard/tedious to find.
  • One thing I must say is that by googling the PI’s twitter/X page, LinkedIn page, and website if they have one (not the university website, but an external website of the research group or PI itself), you can sometimes get a feel for how the PI and his/her lab are. Does the PI post a lot, celebrating his/her students? Do they write about achieving a positive lab culture?

Secondly, you can learn a lot of information (that you can’t learn by doing research online) by talking with the PI

• Category 1: What research does the lab do? Is it interesting to me?
  • You can ask about the current research ongoing in the lab and what would be the potential PhD projects you could undertake if you were to do a PhD in the PI’s lab. NB: PhDs in the US are longer, so they usually won’t give you as defined a project as they would in the UK.
  • You can also ask how much the PI is willing to deviate from a PhD project to suit the PhD student’s interests and scientific curiosity.
• Category 2: What is the scientific performance and reputation of the lab?
  • Of course, this is something you wouldn’t ask the PI. However, in interviews/chats with PIs, I have asked how many opportunities they think I would have to publish. I don’t think PIs have had a problem with that. The PI can give you an idea of how likely it is for you to publish and how many papers.
• Category 3: How good is the lab environment? Will I enjoy my time there and achieve a lot?
  • I would first ask how big the lab is. The bigger the lab is, the less time you will spend directly with the PI, the more likely it is that someone else (e.g., a postdoc) will be your direct supervisor, and the less likely you are to be chased on work because the lab will not fail if you don’t do the work you should. The smaller the lab is, the more one-on-one time you will have with the supervisor, the more likely it is you will have more pressure to produce a certain amount of data (as the lab will rely more on you to publish papers), which can also mean more opportunities to publish important papers. I would say a lab of 15+ is big, a lab somewhere between 8-15 people is medium-sized, and a lab of less than 5 people is quite small. Note that the size of the lab is only correlated with how things work in the lab, not a 100% certain predictor of how your experience will be.
  • You can ask the PI about his management and supervision style.
    • “How often do you meet students one-on-one?”
    • “What are your expectations for PhD students in terms of performing experiments and producing data?”
    • “How often do you have lab meetings?”
    • “Where do you think you lie in the hands-off to hands-on supervision-style spectrum?”

Finally, there are many things you can find out about a lab from talking with a PhD student in the lab that you can’t find from online information or from talking with the PI.

• A note on what PhD students have to say: Most students (from what I have encountered and heard about) are very transparent with their experiences, so they will often reflect how being in the lab is actually like. However, it is important to bear in mind that even in labs that are overall quite positive, there will be people who have bad experiences, and vice versa.
• Category 1: What research does the lab do? Is it interesting to me?
  • I think this can be mostly covered by information online and whatever the PI says.
  • However, you can ask a bit more about what the day-to-day science looks like, for example, asking what experimental techniques are most frequently used by people in the lab
    • Some people advice considering what experimental techniques you will be performing as part of your decision-making when choosing a lab for your PhD, because some people can love or hate doing certain experimental techniques. I wouldn’t disagree with this. Unfortunately, it is hard to tell if you will enjoy performing an experimental technique before you try it out.
• Category 2: What is the scientific performance and reputation of the lab?
  • You can ask the PhD student about his/her experience publishing in the lab, if the PhD student thinks he/she gets to do high-level, ambitious experiments, and if they feel they have had many chances to do projects that actually led to publications. In other words, you are trying to decipher if the PhD students in the lab get to do cool, challenging projects that can then go on to become good papers.
• Category 3: How good is the lab environment? Will I enjoy my time there and achieve a lot?
  • This is probably the most important information you can get from the PhD students.
  • You can ask tons of questions about this. I would remember that you are basically trying to understand two things: (1) Will I enjoy my time in that lab? (2) Will I be in an environment that is going to help me be successful in achieving my goals? And of course, there is overlap between the two.
  • How does the PhD student feel about the lab environment and her peers?
  • How would the PhD student describe how the PI likes to work and manage PhD students?
  • How much support does the PhD student think PhD students in the lab get from more senior members, whether it is to learn new experimental techniques or just answer questions about science or more practical issues (e.g., where to find reagents)?
  • Something I would personally ask would be how supportive the PI is of your own goals, even if you decide to leave academia. Does the PI encourage trying out other career paths, or does he actively try to push people to stay in academia? E.g., if you are thinking of becoming a science journalist, is he fine with you taking some time to go to a course about becoming a science journalist? Or will he see that as something negative?
  • It is important to note that there is no “perfect” lab environment, and preferences are quite personal. Some people like to be pushed more by their supervisors to be kept motivated, while others like to work at their own pace without their supervisor asking them every day how they are doing. There are no right or wrong answers, just try to think what you will like the most and be the most successful with. 

Conclusions

So, by now, I have explained (1) Why the process of finding and choosing labs to apply to/do your PhD is important, (2) How to find labs and make an initial list of labs to consider, (3) how do you find information about the research topics, scientific performance and reputation, and the environment of a lab by using information available online, by talking to the PI, and by talking to PhD students. This should result in a reasonable number of labs and, thus, PhD programs to apply to. However, as you may have noticed, step 3 is quite a lengthy one. Depending on how long your initial list of potential labs for your PhD is, and how long you want to spend doing this process, you might want to first narrow the list down before starting step 3 and contacting the PI and a PhD student from each lab. You can rank all the labs in your list according to how interesting you find their research, and then start doing step 3 with the labs at the top of your list. Or perhaps, you can dig a little bit more into each lab using online resources to see if there is any information you can find that lets you narrow down your list. This is up to you.

Thus, the final approach would be something like this:

1. Make a list of the labs you find interesting enough to do your PhD in
2. Rank the labs in this list (e.g., by how interested you are in their research), or narrow down the list using information you can quickly find online
3. For those labs you are most interested in, find more about the research topics, scientific performance and reputation, and the environment of the lab by using information available online, by talking to the PI, and by talking to PhD students.
4. Apply to the PhD programs for the labs where you think you will be successful and enjoy your time during your PhD

To finish, I want to mention three very important things. Firstly, if you can, physically visit the labs! Of course, you will not be able to visit most labs you apply to, maybe none, but for those labs you end up considering very seriously and end up applying to, I would recommend to visit those you can. There is some information you can get from visiting a lab that you won’t get otherwise, especially relating to the lab environment. Secondly, bear in mind that not every lab, probably none, will satisfy every criterion perfectly. So, choose wisely what you want. Personally, I would very happily work in a lab that has a very good reputation, very strong scientific output, and has a great lab environment, even if the research topic of my PhD project is not exactly what I would have chosen if it were up to me. Other people wouldn’t compromise on what the research topic of their PhD project is. Try to think about what you want to get out of your PhD and how you want your PhD experience to be, and then choose accordingly. Thirdly, start ASAP! The deadline for many funded PhD programs in the US and UK is the 1^st or 3^rd of December 2025. I would advise to get on with this lab finding-and-choosing process such that by the end of September, you have already contacted most, if not all, PIs. If there are any labs you already know you would love to do your PhD in, contact those first. And a final tip: make an Excel spreadsheet with key information about each PhD program you are considering applying to, including deadlines. This will make your life easier and your PhD application process more efficient.

Good luck! I hope this has been useful and feel free to email me at alvrh24@gmail.com if you have any questions.