Lab Culture

Mission statement

We want to understand how the world works. We believe that evidence-based approaches provide the best tools to accomplish this goal. We strive to generate the most exciting and important questions and potential technology through inclusive and open-minded discussions. We work to design and implement effective experiments through planning and discussion. We value learning as a critical goal of all lab members. We value diversity in all forms and believe that open and respectful discussions promote the best ideas.

Expectations for lab members

1. Be respectful of everyone. We will all have different perspectives and want an environment that everyone trusts to share theirs. Disagreements are welcome but disrespect is not.
2. Search for your own motivation. Work to understand and communicate what you love about science. This will help to get through the tough times that we all face in science, and make those blissful breakthrough moments all the more rewarding.
3. Appreciate that research often involves learning or developing new approaches that can take a lot of practice to master.
4. Work to distinguish failing from being a failure. We will all fail many times in science but none of us are failures. Imposter syndrome is real – if you don’t know what it is, please google it.
5. Be willing to learn and try new things.
6. Be willing to work hard.
7. Contribute to common lab maintenance – everyone helps to make the lab run as well as to work on their projects.
8. Keep common areas clean. Shared lab areas need to be usable for all and that means extra attention needs to be paid to keeping them clean. This is even more important when using equipment in other labs so that we continue to be welcome abroad.
9. Engage with other lab members by sharing your research and welcoming input and advice, and vice versa. We are wiser as a group than any individual and we can put our wisdom to its best use with engaged communication.