Lab Ideas
Avasthi Lab Career Development Week 2017
Last year, we held a Career Development Week for the lab, in which I encouraged everyone to take a little extra time to focus on their career goals. For this exercise, I provide a list Read more
Reflections
Feeding your scientific soul.
One thing that shocked me when I started my faculty position was the explosion of opportunities. As a grad student and postdoc, I remember clawing for opportunities that seemed all too infrequent. Upon starting my Read more
Pro-tips
Try a writing checklist
Scientific writing doesn’t come naturally to most of us and is a craft that is honed over a lifetime of practice. One thing that can make the process of writing and getting feedback from your Read more
Pro-tips
Developing an idea filter.
I saw this great tweet today from @Holz_lab: When PI proposes an experiment, don’t jump on it right away. High chance they’ll change something upon pondering #protip — Marina Holz (@Holz_lab) It’s so important for Read more
Lab Ideas
Shaking up lab meeting
For a little change of pace, this past week I replaced our regular lab meeting with a writing exercise. Nearly every person in the lab was thinking about or actively working on a manuscript, so Read more
Pro-tips
Thoughts on picking a rotation lab
It’s almost summer and a new class of graduate students will be starting soon (we usually get at least a few students that do summer rotations). This got me thinking about how students select rotation Read more
Pro-tips
Expectations
Every once in a while on New PI Slack we revisit the discussion about lab expectations and onboarding documents. Our lab has a private onboarding document (private because it contains a lot of specific information about our data Read more
Pro-tips
Paper writing 101: Building a narrative
I was thinking about putting together a paper writing guide for the lab. Just thinking formally about how I write a paper was a useful exercise. I have lots of ideas on how to deconstruct Read more
Pro-tips
What to bring to a meeting with your advisor
All advisors have different mentoring styles and different personalities. Despite these differences, everyone is busy and wants to get the most out of individual meetings with their lab members. Here are a few things that I think Read more
Pro-tips
On prioritizing experiments
In the lab, we often have discussions about prioritizing experiments and I usually have a strong opinion about these things. I was starting to realize that being able to set these priorities, feel confident in your Read more