Lab Ideas
Live Preprint Journal Club with First and Last Authors
Last week, I spent several days giving a few talks for a virtual visit to UC Berkeley. The last day, I was invited to sit in on a journal club run by 2nd and 3rd Read more
Pro-tips
Peer mentorship and bottom-up advocacy
At the American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting this year, #CellBio2020, I organized a session with three visionary friends, Jessica Polka, Joel Boerckel, and Casey Greene on “Reimagining Publishing, Networking, and Mentoring.” It was Read more
Pro-tips
Navigating the valley of despair (aka years 4-end of grad school)
Twice per year, I sit down with each person in the lab to go over their career development plan. We discuss what they think they’re doing well relative to others at their career stage (not Read more
Pro-tips
Love letter to iBiology
I recently participated in a fantastic iBiology course called “Let’s Experiment : A Guide for Scientists Working at the Bench.” My involvement partly included a discussion about an experimental decision tree I made to help Read more
Pro-tips
Choosing a lab for your PhD or postdoc
I was recently asked to comment on how I decided upon PhD and postdoc labs by Elisabeth Pain at Science Careers. The piece appears here but of course my long-winded answers had to be edited Read more
Pro-tips
Encouraging good scholarship
Keeping up with the literature is almost always the first thing to fall by the wayside for all of us when we get busy. Usually this is because there are few overt short-term consequences of letting 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
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