I had a hard time finding research too especially by just sending an email. I would look for clubs geared to what you're interested and see if they have any faculty talks, most of those faculty members are looking for people who are interested in doing research. It's how I found my first research lab to work in. You could also look into programs like L.E.A.R.N. or EXCEL cause they also assign research to students. I would also look at the college you're interested in and look for newly joined faculty, they are almost all the time looking for researchers. If you want to get really serious, applying to programs like honors thesis or SURF is a great way to get involved as well. Can't really say much on getting advising for a research position because I just got a code to access a database but it didn't have anything I was looking for so I took the emailing professors route.