Example 1
XXX,
I was wondering if you would be willing to be on my dissertation committee. The dissertation is on memory discrimination in Pavlovian fear conditioning of mice, so my adviser and I thought you might be a good fit. The proposed schedule would be to propose in late May and defend within two years.
The dissertation will concern context discrimination, in which a mouse shows a freezing response for the context it was trained in but not one that has been sufficiently altered. My thesis is that the cues of the context are independently capable of triggering the freezing response and that combinations of cues are largely redundant. This data will contribute to the understanding of the hippocampus, which has been alternatively hypothesized to bind cues to store a unified representation of context in this task. The experiments for my dissertation will determine the effect of individual stimulus changes, the interaction of combinations of stimulus changes, and how these stimulus contributions change over time, after hippocampal lesions, and under pharmacological manipulation.
I have more detailed information but I thought the above would be enough to give you the general idea. Feel free to ask additional questions. When you have a chance, please let me know if you’d be willing to serve on my dissertation committee.
Thanks very much!
Example responses
This sounds very interesting. I would be pleased to sit on your committee. Count me in.
Take care
Sounds like an interesting project. I’ll be happy to be on the committee
Sure, yes. Happy to do that.