Starting a research with a professor as a business professional When I graduated from college in 2012, I was quite excited about my job (although it is a small hi-tech company.) My goal has always been to either start my own business or get back to school for PhD. Ultimately, be able to live a life filled with research, and learning. 

I have been working for almost two years now. And before going back to school, I really want to publish a paper and make myself a better PhD candidate. And ideally this would help me better discover my field, gain confidence, and maybe discover assistantship opportunities. 

I think I've found a quite interesting topic for a paper that also leverages my work experience in transportation technologies. The paper is about accident prevention and I am targeting a public health professor.  I contacted the professor and I was not able get any response back yet. (It has been 2 days.) I am not sure about the right strategy to follow to communicate such idea and gain her interest. I wrote an email with 3 paragraphs and 350 words. And briefly tried to explain the  possible research context and my intention in starting a PhD. But maybe I was just supposed to ask for an appointment? It is a wise way to sent a follow-up email stating how valuable I think this paper would be? and ask for an appointment?
Many professors take a while to respond to emails. I would give it at least a week before you follow up with her.

When you do send a reminder, keep it brief and polite, and send it as a forward of your previous email, so she won't have to go searching for your other message. Reminding her of why you think the paper is valuable could be a good strategy--if you do it in a way that's not heavy-handed and that you think is true (i.e., it's actually of value to her career aside from another line on her CV).

It's always nice to give her multiple options for responding--you might include a line to the effect of, "If you'd prefer to chat about this over the phone, I'm happy to schedule a brief call at your convenience." Saves her time from having to compose a reply email.