Rotation Schedule

2023-24 Academic Year

The laboratory rotation schedule is listed below. Students are responsible for submitting a copy of the rotation report to the Rotation Advisor and the IBGP coordinator in the Graduate Studies Office (GSO) by the date indicated below. The rotation report can be submitted as an electronic copy to alp229@pitt.edu. 

Students and Rotation Advisors are asked to discuss the rotation as well as the report and complete the attached evaluation form. The completed evaluation form (with all signatures) must be submitted to alp229@pitt.edu by the date indicated below.

Writing the rotation report is a required exercise that provides an opportunity to gain experience writing a scientific paper. While the faculty understand that it is often difficult to obtain a “real paper’s worth” of data in the course of a laboratory, writing the report will be valuable experience in organizing your thoughts and experimental results in a scholarly way that brings the project to a proper conclusion.

The rotation report must include the following basic elements.

Abstract: This should briefly describe the major findings of the study. Keep this between 200 and 400 words. Be concise. It is understood that most rotation experiences do not result in what one would call “major findings.” Simply describe what you did.

Introduction: This section should provide some background about the general area of study that ultimately focuses on the specific problem you investigated. Briefly and clearly describe the specific question, problem or hypothesis your work addresses.

Methods: This should be a thorough description of how the work was done. Technically, another investigator should be able to reproduce the results by conducting the same experiments by following the “recipe” in the methods section. It is fine to reference standard techniques as long as the reader can perform the experiments from the paper(s) you reference.

Results: This is where you describe your experiments in detail. Describe why you did an experiment and how it was performed. Then summarize the results referring to any relevant figures. Figures should have legends that help the reader understand the figures. Do not interpret the experiments in this section.

Discussion: Interpret the findings and tell how the outcome(s) address the question or hypothesis given in the introduction. Are there alternative interpretations, or are there additional experiments that might shed further light on the question? Compare your findings and interpretations to others in the field by citing other investigators’ work. It may happen that you don’t obtain interpretable results in the course of your rotation. If this is the case, you may want to describe what you would do next or what experiments you could perform to obtain interpretable results. Include in the discussion a self-evaluation paragraph answering what you learned in the rotation and how it has influenced your professional goals.

Literature cited: Provide the appropriate references in a form acceptable for a scientific journal.