Student-led Research Club that helps secondary school students make their research ideas come true. We will explain everything you need to know about research and to find your best suitable topic.
Conjecture ClubOur goal is to give students a clear roadmap for launching and completing their own STEM research project, based on real experience and practical advice.
We outline key stages, from choosing a topic and finding mentors to planning, executing, documenting and sharing your work, alongside firsthand advice.
Who this is for: High school or early university students in science, technology, engineering or mathematics who seek more than classroom exercises and want to explore real research
Brief Steps About Research
Choose a topic that is really interests you
1
You need to understand how complex your chosen subject is – for example, it will be much harder to learn topology than number theory or combinatorics as a high school student. My journey began with Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Circus which I found during 9th grade summer. The cyclic number 142 857 captivated me.
Study the literature in your field
2
You need to read literature specifically focused on your topic, as well as several articles that represent the current state of research and review articles that provide a general overview for beginners. After exhausting Gardner’s book, I realized one source wasn’t enough to understand the hidden beauty of numbers. I expanded to works by Ian Stewart, Alex Bellos and Eugenia Cheng.
Find a mentor
3
In my opinion, the most difficult part is finding a mentor. It took me over 3 months of writing emails and attending lectures and open classes by professors at various universities. Start with your school teachers. After over a hundred rejections, I connected with my mentor – I found him through a university professor, whom I found through my math teacher.
Formulate a specific research question
4
You need to narrow your focus to something concrete and manageable. My initial fascination with cyclic numbers was too broad. With my mentor’s guidance, I narrowed my focus to Kaprekar’s function and established my own.