Mentoring in this project is structured, layered, and student‐centered. Students will receive an initial onboarding module covering lab safety, LIPIT fundamentals, and experimental protocols. During the first two weeks, the student will shadow a graduate researcher to gain practical familiarity with the setup and workflows.

Once trained, the student will transition to independent operation of specific sub‐tasks, while maintaining daily check‐ins with their graduate mentor and weekly one‐on‐one meetings with the PI. These weekly meetings will include goal setting, troubleshooting, and connecting experimental findings to broader scientific questions.

The student will also participate in weekly group meetings, presenting updates to peers and receiving feedback from multiple lab members. Emphasis will be placed on developing scientific reasoning and ownership of their project.

The PI's mentoring philosophy emphasizes gradual independence, iterative feedback, and exposure to real research culture. Students are treated as emerging colleagues, with clear expectations, structured milestones, and support mechanisms (e.g., shared lab notebooks, experimental checklists, Slack communications).

By the end of the summer, the student will have planned and executed a coherent set of experiments, learned how to analyze and interpret complex data, and practiced communicating their findings in multiple formats.