Reflections
Permission [always] granted
I talk to a lot of young people with great ideas on how to rethink many aspects of doing science. One thing many of these folks have in common is that they’ve been trying for Read more
Reflections
Tackling our overreliance on journal-based peer review
Many of us who have been preprinting our work (and even those who have not) are familiar with the somewhat heightened sense of fear related to posting a preprint relative to submitting a manuscript for Read more
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
Reflections
Career Development Week 2020 (v5.0)
For five years now, we have been spending one week per year in the lab focusing on career development activities that normally tend to get cast aside in favor of research. This year, we experienced 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
Reflections
Finding your unique path in science
The below is a reprint of my award essay for the ASCB WICB Junior Award for Excellence in Research published originally in MBoC: Avasthi P. Finding your unique path in science. Mol Biol Cell. 2020 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
Reflections
Career Development Week v4.0
This week, we ran our annual career development week in which I encourage the lab to participate in activities that fill gaps in their career development, explore career options, and find new strategies to help Read more
Reflections
Staying vigilant
Recently the NIH changed its language on the Scientific Premise portion of their grant proposals and required that Rigor of the Prior Research now be explicitly be addressed in the Significance and Approach section. This Read more
Lab Ideas
Career Development Week 2018
It’s that time of year again when the lab takes a week to focus on career development. We all have the tendency to prioritize these activities below research and upcoming deadlines but, given their importance, Read more