Sometimes walking into a professor\u2019s office hours can launch a student on an incredible research track. Pierre Fils, a first-year graduate student on the Ph.D. track in structural engineering at the University of Connecticut, did just that his junior year.<\/p>\n
When he went to his design of steel structures professor, Arash Zaghi\u2019s, office, Fils was immediately intrigued by the research Zaghi was doing in structural engineering.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went in thinking I would just talk about the class, but I left with an unofficial mentor,\u201d Fils says.<\/p>\n
Zaghi, along with Sarira Motaref, assistant professor in residence, is indeed now Fils\u2019 mentor for his Ph.D. work.<\/p>\n
Fils is studying the structure of homes in Haiti. He hopes to determine how they could be built to be more resistant to earthquakes like the catastrophe in 2010 that brought down hundreds of thousands of buildings, displacing millions of survivors.<\/p>\n
Fils got his start in research early on by utilizing the connections available to undergrads at UConn. As a member of the EcoHouse learning community, he was able to see first-hand what research looks like.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of had this perception that researchers were a little weird, but once I got to know Professor (Richard) Parnas (faculty director of EcoHouse), I got to see what a cool person he was,\u201d Fils says. \u201cThat was my introduction to research and I thought \u2018this is cool\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the summer of his freshman year, Fils received a McNair fellowship to pursue research working with molecular and cell biology assistant professor Jonathan Klassen studying the symbiotic relationship between ants and various fungi.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was still interested in research, but I was looking for something that would be more my niche,\u201d Fils says.<\/p>\n
In the summer after his junior year, Fils found a project that made him realize how perfect and exciting research is for him. He worked at the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Knoxville, Tennessee studying climate-impacted buildings. More specifically his post was \u201cAssessing the optimality of ASHRAE climate zones using high resolution meteorological data sets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat opportunity\u00a0completely flipped the switch for me when it came to research,\u201d Fils says. \u201cI was engaged in the idea of \u2018let\u2019s learn something new, let\u2019s create some new knowledge and let\u2019s figure out how it is that we can do these things that nobody knows about\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fils credits his learning communities (EcoHouse and ScHOLA2<\/sup>RS House), the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) and being a Student Support Services (SSS) student for the success that he has experienced thus far.<\/p>\n \u201cI would like to attribute my growth to the many connections I have made here at UConn,\u201d Fils says. \u201cThey\u2019ve really pushed me to go beyond my comfort zone and to find other opportunities and allow magic to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Students who don\u2019t know where to start getting involved with research can begin making connections at the Research Connections event on Oct. 17 from 5:30 \u2013 7:30 p.m. in Werth Tower. The event is hosted by some of the same learning communities that Fils credits with helping him forge his path into research, along with the Office of Undergraduate Research. The event is open to all students. First and second year students are particularly encouraged to attend.<\/p>\n A list of researchers who will be at the event can be found on the Research Connections website<\/a>. The fields that will be represented at the event span from animal science to chemistry to sociology to music and art history.<\/p>\n Fils encourages any students who want to get involved in research to contact professors and find a mentor to help them get where they want to be.<\/p>\n \u201cUndergraduate research is so important, especially if you want to go to grad school. (You\u2019ll be) showing them that you already have the experience and that you can work independently,\u201d Fils says. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to know all the answers to the questions, or even the right questions for that matter, so long as you\u2019re willing to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n Follow UConn Research on <\/em>Twitter<\/a><\/em> & <\/em>LinkedIn<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes walking into a professor\u2019s office hours can launch a student on an incredible research track. Pierre Fils, a first-year graduate student on the Ph.D. track in structural engineering at the University of Connecticut, did just that his junior year. When he went to his design of steel structures professor, Arash Zaghi\u2019s, office, Fils was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":142320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866,2076,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2140],"class_list":["post-142341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr","category-research","category-uconn-storrs","series-meet-the-researcher"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 18:14:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151452,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142341\/revisions\/151452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/142320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142341"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=142341"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=142341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}