Reflections
Celebrating Science!
This morning I had the honor of speaking at the Kansas City March for Science. I was invited by an organizer, one of our fantastic graduate students, Cassi Johnson. It was a blustery day so the conditions Read more
Reflections
White knuckles
With startup funds rapidly dwindling and major external grant funding elusive, this year has been arguably the hardest of my professional career. I don’t say it lightly given that other notable gut punches included switching Read more
Reflections
Avasthi Lab Year in Review-2017
I’ve been thinking about doing a year in review for the lab but it has been difficult to think about. It’s been quite a rough year. Last year, I was very optimistic. We had gotten positive comments Read more
Pro-tips
So you have a cool result.
Maybe you’ve been optimizing an experiment for a while and finally have it working. You do that first solid trial and see a cool effect! Hurray!! Now what? The urge to run and tell your Read more
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