How to do research as an Engineer?

[ss09]

I am a Data Science Engineer and I work in a big corporate. I have been contemplating to do phD. But first, I want to get some research experience. How does one do research in a lab with a full time job? Specifically, I want to know if people approach the professors of these labs to work on these projects? I am not able to think of a good way to do so with my main goal being to get some research experience.. thank you!

[jsolano]

Hi there, my approach here will be reverse engineering. Look for the most interesting papers in the area do you want to gain experience. Try to reproduce the experiments in details, document your results and even try to make new experiments to see if you find something new. Ask questions to the authors about your problems. I'm sure that making this in your after ours time, you will gain a good intuition of what research means and you will have some learning lessons to share with others.

[ss09]

Thank you for the reply @jsolano. I have started reading papers. I understand the value of what you are saying. thanks.