For Everyone

Here are some things we should all keep in mind while in lab

Science is an incredibly rewarding endeavor, but it can be difficult as well. It is important to remember that we are a team and that everyone in the lab deserves a positive, engaging, hostility-free, challenging, and collaborative environment so they can do their best research.

As we work together, it is part of my job to help you develop as a scientist. I will contribute to the best of my ability to your professional development and/or progress to a degree and help you to set goals and (hopefully!) achieve them. In general, I expect you to:

• Learn how to plan, design, and conduct high-quality scientific research

• Learn how to present and document your findings in a clear, concise, and persuasive manner.

• Be honest, ethical, and enthusiastic

• Be engaged within the research group and with outside colleagues

• Treat your lab mates and equipment with respect

• Take advantage of professional development opportunities

• Work hard, seek help when you need it, and don't give up!

• Help Others. Every one of us has talents that we can share with others in the lab or outside collaborators.

• Take care of yourself mentally and physically.

Learn how to plan, design, and conduct high-quality scientific research

• Think carefully about how your research should be done. You should have a clear vision of all of the steps necessary to complete a story before you start. Be methodical. Incorporate sanity checks in the form of positive and negative controls. Be prepared to make changes to your plan as you go... don't get stuck assuming that your original idea is the only one that could be correct!

• Maintain detailed, organized, and accurate laboratory records. I am okay with either physical or electronic lab notebooks, but the former must remain in the lab and the latter must be regularly backed up to the lab Box account. Your notes should allow your work to be reproduced by others and are required by funding agencies and useful for determining authorship.

• It is important to keep up with the literature in the field. Try to devote at least an hour a week to reading relevant papers relating to your project. I do not necessarily have the bandwidth to keep on top of the literature for your project --- YOU need to be the expert! Please forward me papers you find particularly relevant and I will do the same for you. I suggest setting up keyword searches through pubmed or getting digests of certain highly relevant journals.

Build a mentoring team! Everyone needs many mentors with diverse perspectives throughout their careers. Once you have a handle on my strength and deficiencies as a mentor (feel free to ask, I'm very open about them), seek out formal and informal mentors to help you achieve your goals, ideally a diverse team with many different backgrounds.

Learn how to present and document your findings

• Authorship is the currency of academia, and, for better or for worse, your productivity will be one of the first things future employers and funding agencies will examine about you

• I will push you to think about publishing throughout your time in the lab, not only at the end.

• Start the writing process early! Begin drafting figures and especially the Methods section as you go. Be prepared to go through several rounds of revisions.

• Utilize other lab members to edit and revise your work. Internal peer-review is a valuable phase.

• Take your lab meetings and journal clubs seriously. They are your best, safest place to practice how to formally communicate your research to other scientists.

• Search for and attend local and national opportunities to present your research, whether that is a local seminar series or a national meeting

Be honest, ethical, and enthusiastic

• If you make a mistake, own up to it no matter what, even if the paper is already submitted or published. We admit our mistakes, correct them, and move on.

• It is never acceptable to plagiarize or tamper with your data (create, omit, fudge) in any way. Negative results are still results and are important.

Remember: We don't generate data to prove our favorite hypotheses. We perform science to discover the truth, whether that agrees with our original ideas or disproves them, through rigorous research.

Be engaged within the research group and with outside colleagues

• Attend and actively participate in all group meetings and seminars. Participation goes beyond presenting your own work and includes providing support and feedback to others in the lab. Pay attention to others and help create a climate of engagement and mutual respect

• Regularly meet with me and provide me with updates on the progress and results of your activities and experiments

• Run any potential collaborations by me. Collaborating outside the lab is encouraged as it helps you to form connections with the greater scientific community, but these collaborations need to be discussed and signed off on by everyone so there is no confusion later on regarding authorship, etc.

• We believe in the value of pre-prints and will deposit our manuscripts on a preprint server like bioRxiv when we submit to a peer-reviewed journal.

Treat your lab mates and equipment with respect

• Take part in shared laboratory responsibilities

• Expect to share reagents and presentation with lab members

• Discuss authorship, ownership, data, etc early, often, and openly.

• Maintain a safe and clear workspace

• Be respectful, tolerant of, and work closely with all of your lab mates: Respect differences in values, personalities, work styles, and perspectives.

Take advantage of professional development opportunities

• Be knowledgeable of the policies, deadlines, and requirements of your program or the university. Comply with requirements like thesis meetings.

• Actively cultivate your professional development. UNC has resources in place to support professional development at all stages of your career. Please take advantage of these resources, as becoming a successful scientist encompasses more than just academic research. Aim to attend a weekly seminar. Come to me with training opportunities and we'll try to make them happen.

• Attend conferences and workshops. Although the availability of travel funds may vary, I encourage everyone to attend at least one conference per year (although you should present a poster or give a talk if you do!). Conference abstracts should be approved by me prior to submission, and we should work on your talk or poster together before you present it.

• Apply for fellowships, awards, and travel grants. Not only will this help your career, be a visible sign of your potential, and help the overall lab funding situation, writing a proposal will give you valuable experience thinking about how your research fits into the larger context of the scientific community. If you need nomination, let me know and I'll be happy to nominate you.

Work hard, seek help, and don't give up!

• Work hard and be proud of your work!

• Remember that all of us were "new" at many points in our careers and ask for help if you feel uncertain, overwhelmed, or just want more support. Build up a network of friends and colleagues you can ask for help and reinforce this philosophy with new and existing lab members

• Let me know what sort of communication style or meeting schedule you would prefer. No one style works for everyone all the time.

• Do not skip a meeting with me if you feel you have not made adequate progress on your research. This might be the most critical time to meet!

• Building off of that last point: It is my job to help you do your science, but I cannot help you if I don't know that there is a problem!

Ask Me For Help!

To reiterate: It is my job to help you achieve your goals in science, but I cannot help you if I don't know if there's a problem. Please come talk with me!

Help Others

• As you spend time in the lab you will gain expertise that no one else has. Be generous in sharing that expertise and others will be generous with you.

Take care of yourself mentally and physically

• If you are sick, stay home and take care of yourself!

• Find a balance of things to be passionate about both inside and outside of the lab

• Find a routine that works for you. It shouldn't be necessary to (regularly) work more than 40-50 hours a week or come in on weekends. If you find yourself doing this, lets talk about what we can do as a lab to help you!