Open Direction

SoTS Research Lab

Available: In-person: Princeton, NJ. Hybrid: everywhere.

For high school, middle school, and home school students

Mentor: Dr. Sergey Samsonau

The Topic Is Open

Open Direction is the lab where the topic is up to you. Some students arrive with a question already in mind; others arrive curious but still figuring out what they want to study. Either is fine. We help you find or sharpen a direction and turn it into a real research project. Same standards as every other SoTS lab.

The Opportunity

SoTS Research Labs come in two shapes: both genuine, both productive.

Subject-specific labs build students together in a shared direction. AI Meets Science, Physics Tournament, Planet Impact, Science of Video Games. When enrollment in a given lab in a given semester reaches a working cohort, peers on the same topic create compounding momentum: shared literature, shared methods, shared problem-solving sessions, deep accumulated focus from the lab director on one area. A shared direction also allows team-based work with role separation: students with complementary skills can split responsibilities (data, modeling, writing, presentation, fieldwork) on the same project, the way real research groups do, an arrangement developed in detail in our framework paper (arXiv:2210.08966). With low enrollment in a given semester, a subject-specific lab functions closer to Open Direction in practice: same mentorship, just without the peer-cohort effect.

Open Direction supports any direction. Same lab structure. Same weekly mentorship. Same standards. The topic is yours: bring a question already in mind, or come to find one. Topics that overlap with our subject-specific labs (AI, physics, environment, video games) are also welcome here. The difference between Open Direction and a subject-specific lab is the structure (open vs. shared cohort direction), not what you're allowed to study.

The work itself is the same work that happens in every SoTS lab: finding or refining a question, choosing methods, running the study, writing it up, presenting it. The direction is just yours.

What You Get

A research direction that's actually yours. Not a starter assignment, not a pre-packaged topic. A real project on something you chose, scoped down to something you can actually finish.

Methodology that travels. Once you've framed, executed, and communicated a study under guidance, you can do it in any field. The transferable skill is the research process itself.

The same mentorship as our subject labs. Weekly meetings, structured feedback, and access to AI Research Mentor between sessions. Same lab director. Same standards.

A real publication and presentation pathway. Eligibility to publish in our peer-reviewed journal, present at the SoTS Annual Meeting, and earn a Certificate of Research Training.

What Students Do

The first phase of the lab depends on where you start.

If you arrive with an interest — vague (“something about sleep”) or specific (“why does this one mechanism in chess engines fail in late endgames”) — the first job is to turn it into a question that's small enough to study and big enough to matter.

If you arrive without one (you're curious but haven't landed on a topic), we work with you to find one. Reading, structured conversations with the lab director, and short scoping exercises help you locate something you genuinely want to spend a semester (or more) on.

From there, the work is the same regardless of where you started:

  • Refine the question. Move from interest to a specific, researchable claim.
  • Find the relevant literature. Learn what's already known and where the open questions are.
  • Choose your methods. Survey, experiment, analysis, simulation, fieldwork: whatever the question actually requires.
  • Run the study. Collect data, build the model, do the measurements.
  • Analyze and write. Honest report of what you found, whether or not it matches your expectations.
  • Present. Defend your work to peers and external audiences.
Note: Some directions require materials, software licenses, lab access, or travel that SoTS Labs does not cover. We'll flag any such costs early so you can plan or adjust scope.

Example Directions

“Any direction” is a strong claim. What does it actually look like in practice?

Dr. Samsonau previously built and directed the AIfSR Innovation Group at NYU, which has supported more than 100 students on more than 20 student-led projects with collaborators inside and outside the university. The breadth of directions students pursued there is a useful preview of what Open Direction can support at SoTS:

  • Biology. Vaccination response prediction; sleep-pattern classification from EEG; optical microscopy segmentation for cell shapes; image-based embryonic-lethality prediction in worms; symptom-based disease classification (e.g., malaria); protein sequence analysis with LLMs.
  • Chemistry. Determining battery current from the surrounding magnetic field; scoring and sampling for molecular crystal ranking; cancer detection via mass spectrometry imaging with ML.
  • Physics. Focused-ion-beam profile reconstruction from etching profiles; analysis of particle motion trajectories under a microscope; ML-enhanced spectral analysis of micro-diamonds; acoustic detection and classification of pests; movement of antiferromagnetic domain walls over time.
  • Psychology. Generative AI for morphemes connected to magnetoencephalography data (neurolinguistics of morphology); LLM-based labeling of generic gender categories in text.
  • Scientific software. Automatic annotation generation for scientific figures; reliable parsing of scientific PDFs; benchmarking cloud-coverage detection on HPC.

What's realistic at pre-college level. Some directions are much easier without access to a university wet lab, electron microscope, hospital data, or biosafety facilities. Usually doable: computational work (data analysis, ML, simulations), survey research, projects on public datasets, evaluations of AI tools, theoretical investigations, and field or observational studies that don't require specialized instruments. Usually not doable as-is: wet-lab biology and chemistry, instrumentation-heavy physics, neuroimaging, and anything requiring biosafety facilities. Often a direction can be reframed to fit (for example, reanalyzing published datasets instead of generating new ones), and we'll talk through scoping during the first conversation.

The AIfSR examples above are NYU undergraduate and graduate projects from a separate organization, not SoTS student work; included here to illustrate the breadth of what student-led, student-defined research can cover. Open Direction projects at SoTS will be sized appropriately for a high school, middle school, or homeschool timeline.

Why This Works

Research mentoring is mostly methodology, not domain expertise. The expert moves that matter (how to frame a question, how to scope a study, how to read a result honestly, how to communicate findings) apply across fields. The lab director's job is to make those moves visible and scaffold them while you develop your own judgment, then fade as you become independent.

That's why a single lab can guide students working on very different questions. The published methodology behind our labs develops this argument in detail, and the framework that operationalizes authentic research education at scale was published earlier:

How the Lab Works

Weekly meetings. Share your progress. Get feedback. Hear what other students are working on. Directions different from yours often surface useful methods.

Work between sessions. You run your study, analyze results, write up findings. AI Research Mentor is available when you get stuck.

Same standards as any science. Clear question. Fair methodology. Honest report of what you find, whether it matches your expectations or not.

Mentor

Dr. Sergey Samsonau

  • Trained 100+ students in research methodology at NYU
  • Built and directed research labs program at PRISMS (top USA high school)
  • Led AI projects at financial, medical, and educational institutions
  • Conceptualized and organized AI Meets Science NYC-metro area conference
  • Developer of original research education methodologies

View Full Profile

Prerequisites

  • Curiosity and a willingness to commit to investigating something seriously; having a topic in mind is welcome but not required
  • Willingness to do the work of finding or refining a researchable question
  • Commitment to weekly meetings and work between sessions
  • Comfort presenting work in English

No prior research experience required. No predefined topic required. The point of the lab is to teach you the process.

General Details on SoTS Research Labs

Enrollment and Cost

Available in In-person and Hybrid formats, in Fall, Spring, and Summer semesters. See Princeton Labs enrollment for full details and the schedule call.

We help you find what to study, and then study it like a scientist.

Communities We Serve with In-Person Labs

Belle Mead, Bridgewater, Cranbury, East Windsor, Edison, Ewing, Flemington, Franklin Township, Freehold, Hamilton, Hillsborough, Hopewell Borough, Hopewell Township, Lambertville, Lawrence Township, Manalapan, Marlboro, Metuchen, Montgomery, New Hope (PA), Newtown (PA), North Brunswick, Pennington, Plainsboro, Princeton, Princeton Junction, Robbinsville, Rocky Hill, Skillman, South Brunswick, West Windsor, Yardley (PA), and beyond.

Mercer County, Somerset County, Middlesex County, Hunterdon County, Bucks County (PA), Monmouth County.

Outside the Princeton, NJ area? Hybrid lets students anywhere participate in authentic weekly research: Zoom sessions plus a few half-day in-person visits per semester. See Princeton Labs enrollment for details.