Research Interests

[EchoSilver]

Hello fellow students. 

So I have a question that will sound painfully naive. I just started graduate school this semester. I am in a Msc Biology program. I was informed this week that we have a meet and greet tomorrow. It will serve as an opportunity for the professors to give a quick over view of their research. The head of our department told us all to be prepared to say something about our research interests.  I am unsure of what to say, my main interests are cancer and neurodegenerative diseases like ALS. Is this enough to tell the faculty? I don't expect anyone to have an exact idea of what they would like to do.  But I also do not want to seem like I am completely uninformed. 

Thanks for your opinions. 

[knp]

Can you narrow down from Topics, like cancer and ALS, to problems or questions you might ask about them? You can likely still stay very broad, but grounding your interests in a facet of those topics, like "I'm interested in targeted therapies for cancer, especially cancers of the internal organs," or "I'm interested in problems of the aging brain, whether brain cancer or neurodegenerative diseases," will help professors help you better. Even if you haven't narrowed your interests down between six or seven options of that level, and even if you say that, the specifics will still help the conversation be more productive than if you go in saying 'cancer': surely there are aspects of cancer you are less interested in, so not focusing on those will save time.