Three professors, from UCSF, Notre Dame and Emory, are teaching the 2026 Winter Online Research Program. That doesn't mean their students get the same experience. A student drawn to biology and medicine, one who wants to dig into international conflict and foreign policy, and one who wants to take math and engineering into economic and social problems can't all be doing the same research.
Good research takes more than picking a famous professor. The first question is how a student's interests line up with a professor's field. Here is what each of the three studies, and the kind of student each field tends to suit.
Life sciences, chemistry and pharmacy: Jason Sello, UCSF
Jason Sello is a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the UCSF School of Pharmacy. His research covers the discovery, design and synthesis of bioactive molecules, and the mechanisms by which drugs act.
"I'm interested in medicine" is not yet a research topic. To get there, a student has to narrow the scope to something concrete: how a particular disease develops, how a specific molecule behaves in a living system, or how a drug candidate is designed. This direction works well for students who want to bring chemical questions to what they already know about biology.
A good fit if you:
- are considering a major in the life sciences, chemistry or pharmacy
- want to know how drugs work or what drives a disease
- enjoy tracking down scientific evidence and analyzing data
International relations, political science and foreign policy: Sebastian Rosato, Notre Dame
Sebastian Rosato, a professor of political science at Notre Dame, studies international relations theory, great-power competition and foreign policy. With the international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, he co-wrote , a book that examines how states reach their foreign-policy decisions.
