I started my own research in August of 2022. It was easy to identify a general area of research demand; I picked head-to-head genes in cancer because 1. It was a relatively unexplored area of research and 2. I was interested in cancer from personal experience. That was by far the easiest stage.

From August till January, I was just trying and failing to understand the area. I printed out at least 30 papers and pored through them for hours at a time, reading the most relevant one no less than 8 times. Every time I thought I understood the topic, the next paper punched me in the face and told me I was stupid and overconfident. Around mid-January I had pretty much exhausted all the relevant papers, and started my data collection and preparation. Again, January to late February was just spent trying to simply understand and use online databases and resources. Searching for a single tool to do transcription factor annotation took me another 2 weeks.

When it came to the actual substantial research phase, I finished the entire project in less than two weeks. 14 days. 7%.

Looking back, the astronomical amounts of time spent on understanding and looking for resources could have been avoided with the experience of peers or a mentor. As inexperienced high school students, we often don’t know how to google and what to look for.

After I had finally got the paper and the publication out of the way, I started investing more time into this project, guiding it to what it is now. The premise was for it to be the perfect research partner, with plentiful resource-gathering and analytical skills: a synthesized community of proactive peer review and experienced mentor guidance.

The homophone of SAI.DAO in Chinese, 赛道, means racetrack. As such, SAI.DAO is an opportunity for driven and ambitious high school researchers to jump start their research, offering unlimited refuel stations and crowd support. As a saying in Chinese goes, “I offer you an umbrella because I too have been drenched by the rain”. This is exactly what SAI.DAO is for, a complement for the missing experience and insights in a high schooler’s research project.