As
Rockin_Gamer752 has mentioned in his solution you'll need 180 research points which equates to finding 1800 samples during missions.
Samples can be found in all types of missions and appear as a bright yellow object to pick up. You can see these on the map by bringing along and using a UAV during the mission.
Each mission will have a set amount of samples, increasing the higher the difficulty level. I recommend only playing difficulty 6 or higher (preferably 12) and avoiding Snow planets as they hinder your movement speed and thus overall farming speed. While lower level planets are easier, every mission has a shuttle extraction timer at the end which means that although they're faster to beat all objectives in they're not that much faster overall than higher level missions yet contain significantly less samples.
The key to farming samples quickly is finishing missions quickly once you've found them all, because of this you will want the Cardio perk to increase movement speed and you'll want to fail as many objectives as possible while ignoring most enemies, although this will be at the cost of extra influence and bonus XP. Be sure to check which objectives you can fail before starting the mission so you can pick one that's quick to complete. Black Box missions can be failed by falling of a cliff while carrying it, Escorts can be killed and objectives you need to defend can be destroyed by yourself or you can just leave them to the enemies while you continue to look for samples. Also be sure to bring a Shredder in missions that would require a Hellbomb as they're quicker and don't require defending.
One more important note is to look out for Capital Defend events, whilst you'll need to participate in one for another trophy they're also great for samples as a level 12 defence nets you 22 Samples per mission instead of the usual 17 for a level 12 mission , they're also much denser and easier to find as well as being shorter missions most of the time due to their layouts. These will only be available for limited periods of time so really make the most of the opportunity.