I am interested in research concerning HIV, but I have no lab/HIV experience at all. Where do I start?

I am VERY VERY interested in doing research involving human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) yet I have never done actual research, and I know minimal about HIV. How do I get into both? What would you recommend doing to learn about HIV? Get medical books, and take lots of notes? I have no idea how to start. And how does one get involved with lab work? What goes into HIV research, what must one know/do, etc? Thank you so much!

I am interested in research concerning HIV, but I have no lab/HIV experience at all. Where do I start?
I have quite a bit of info i could share with you from personal experience but non I wish to share on the board. email me I will be able to help you.
Reply:If you are talking about doing this as a career, of course the first step would be to go to college/university. The world needs all of the HIV/AIDS researchers we can get, so if you are wanting to make a career out of this type of research I commend you!! If you just have an personal interest in this particular topic, the internet is rich with resources in the form of educational websites. Also, as the first answerer said, books are a wonderful source of information. The only problem with books with regard to HIV/AIDS is they become outdated very quickly as new advances are made in research, and new medications/treatments are discovered and tried out. Good luck to you!!
Reply:start reading books, good luck
Reply:I currently work on HIV research and I'm a graduate student. What sort of work are you interested in? If you are interested in researching the virus itself, you could focus on microbiology to understand the viral life cycle, etc. Alternatively, you could focus on the immune response to viral infection, (immunology) or the drugs that are used to treat HIV (pharmacology) or look into enzymatic processes that the virus performs (biochemistry) or how HIV is spread among certain populations (epidemiology). You get the idea that there is a wide variety of things and disciplines that you can focus on in HIV research.





A college degree in a science field would be a must for any sort of HIV research. Plus, it will give you an idea of what sort of work would interest you in the first place. With a bachelor's degree, you would be able to be a tech or someone who works in a lab. Anything more than being a tech (doing experiments that someone else asks you to do), you would have to have a postgraduate degree; a Master's or a Ph.D. in a science field in order to actually control what you work on and be responsible for running a lab.





If you want to actually look for jobs, simply look into different pharmaceutical companies that make anti-HIV drugs (Glaxo, Roche, BMS, Abbot, Merck) and see if they are hiring. Or you could look at websites from different universities and find a lab that works on something that interests you and contact the principal investigator for that lab and see if you could talk to them about it.





There are a number of medical books out there on HIV, so just take a look around.





However, unless you have a degree in a scientific field, it will be difficult to begin working on HIV research.
Reply:if you really are serious about it and want to contribute to the research you should probably go back to college or maybe there might be an online class which could go faster if you have comitment, good luck!