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Lab day-to-day

Here we describe expectations for regular lab activities and the day-to-day lab environment. This is a living document and will be updated as we find better ways of doing things. If you'd like clarification on anything or to propose something new, bring it up either in lab meeting or during a 1:1 meeting with Jess.

We will have a section on lab culture, but Jess feels that she can't write this on her own! The lab will collaboratively write this in about one year from now.

1. Lab meetings

We have a one hour lab meeting once per week, on Tuesdays from 10:00-11:00. All lab members are expected to attend this meeting in person, unless you are taking annual leave, are sick, are away, or have a one-off scheduling conflict. The format of the meeting will be lab announcements, a quick round table where each member briefly describes what they're currently working on, and a ~30 minute discussion led by someone in the group.

Since our group is small, lab members will lead discussions frequently and you are not expected to have polished presentations - ugly slides or rough outlines in a Google Doc are totally fine! We will alternate between sharing project proposals, results, getting feedback on posters and talks prior to conferences, and discussing papers ("journal club"). The point is not to "show off" your progress, but to engage other group members in discussion. Occaisionally we will invite external guests to share their work, either virtually or in person. We use this spreadsheet to plan upcoming meetings.

2. Communication

Our lab uses in person conversations, Slack, email, GitHub, and Google Docs for communications. We do not expect responses outside of office hours or when on annual leave. Please notify other lab members of upcoming annual leave in lab meeting so that they can plan accordingly. Research-specific questions should be posted as issues in the relevant GitHub repository - see more information on the GitHub Guidelines page. If specific plans are made during in person conversations, please send a short summary email so that Jess has a written record (ie. Hi Jess, We just discussed that I will attend X conference in June. Thanks, Joe).

We encourage social interactions and discussion in the lab office space, while still allowing everyone to focus on their work. Please use a meeting room for Zoom meetings instead of the shared lab space. If Jess isn't on campus, feel free to use her office. If someone has their headphones on and looks deeply focused, send them a Slack message instead of interrupting them. If you are trying to focus, feel free to silence your Slack notifications and close your email - you aren't expected to be immediately reachable at all hours of the workday. Do ask for help if you are stuck on something. A good guideline is 30 minutes: you should try to figure things out on your own initially, but if you are stuck for longer than this, please reach out!

3. Office vs. remote guidelines

EMBL-EBI is a hybrid work environment and the official expectation is three days in office per week. Ewald Lab members are expected to attend lab meetings (every Tuesday), regular department seminars (every other Thursday), and 1:1 meetings with Jess in person. Other than these cases, the 'three day rule' will operate according to the honor system and Jess will not keep close tabs on it.

Some additional considerations:

  • If you are either in training or are training someone else, it might make sense to be in the office more often than three days per week for a short period of time - you should coordinate with the trainer/trainee.
  • Sometimes you will be out of office for prolonged periods, for example when attending workshops or conferences. No need to ask permission, but please let Jess know ahead of time.
  • EMBL is very international, and many people like the option of working remotely from their home country for short periods, for example a few days of work to meet hard deadlines in the middle of booked annual leave. This can put you in violation of residency and tax laws so please discuss these sorts of plans with Jess before booking anything so that we can check about grey areas with HR.
  • If you are sick, please take time off to recover! If you have a cold but are well enough and want to work, please work from home until you are symptom-free. Just let the lab know in Slack that you'll be working from home until your symptoms are gone.

4. 1:1 meetings

There are three types of regularly scheduled 1:1 meetings with Jess, each 30 minutes long:

Weekly research meetings: please come prepared to briefly describe what you've been working on, what you plan to work on next, and to discuss any new results or problems that you've faced. There will be weeks where you've not made any progress, for example if you've been on annual leave or at a conference. This is totally ok, and you can cancel the check-in if there's nothing to discuss.

Quarterly career check-ins: many people put off thinking about their next position until they are nearing the end of their contract (thinking about the future is scary!), but this is not helpful. The purpose of this check-in is for Jess to know if there are things we should do now to help you A) figure out if you're interested in a particular career path, and B) make sure that you have a competitive application once you have decided what you want to do. This could mean getting you involved in new projects that strategically teach you a new skillset, setting up a secondment with a company, registering for professional development training courses, or deciding to apply for a specific fellowship. Fellowship applications in particular require advance planning, usually 12+ months in advance of when results will be announced.

Annual reviews: this is not meant to be a scary meeting! It is dedicated time for you and Jess to have a conversation on how things are going at a very high level. There should be no surprises - any areas where you can make improvements should already have been explicitly communicated during our weekly check-ins. One of Jess's main goals for this meeting is to get feedback from you about lab culture and practices - are there things that we can do differently to better serve all members of the lab? These meetings are only for lab members with multi-year contracts. If there is some sort of written review as part of your position (ie. annual Cambridge University progress reports for PhDs), we will fill out this form together during this meeting.

PhD students also have thesis advisory committee (TAC) meetings once per year. It is very difficult to find time for three PIs to meet, so please start trying to schedule this 6 months in advance of the deadline.

Please keep your Google calendar updated with your annual leave and work-related travel. It is helpful to indicate days that you will work from home; Jess tries to note her WFH days 1 week in advance. This is so that Jess can move 1:1 meetings in your calendar if scheduling conflicts come up. If she moves something last minute and you had already planned on working from home, this is fine and the meeting can happen on Zoom.

5. Contributing to campus life

The Ewald Lab highly values contributions towards a fun, inclusive, and engaging campus life. Some of this is at a professional level - being able to approach another scientist (no matter how senior / famous they are) and strike up a conversation is a valuable skillset that can be learned, even by extreme introverts :) If EBI or Sanger is hosting a seminar on a topic clearly related to your work, you are expected to attend in person. As a small and diverse research department, most seminars will be poorly attended if people only go to those directly related to their work - this is a bit awkward. You are encouraged to also attend seminars that are not related to your work, and to volunteer to meet with the speaker either alone or in a small group during their campus visit. This is a great way to practice networking.

We also value organising and participating in social events that are not related to research at all, ideally including people outside of our lab. These types of interactions build relationships that make us more resilent, make campus life more enjoyable, and can lead to entirely unanticipated scientific collaborations. Many people on campus are bound by the shuttle schedule - therefore, a bit of wiggle room on scheduling social events during the work day is ok (ie. short foosball tournament, tangentially science-related documentary screening, etc). If you have an idea for an event, bring it up in lab meeting for feedback. Jess might be able to help with advertising, finding supporting budget, booking space, etc. Silly ideas are very welcome, but please be thoughtful of others - no jokes poking fun on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. If you've recently attended a fun event, share you experience with the lab!

6. Work-life balance

Our lab values keeping a balanced schedule, and priortises sustainable work habits that leave time to care for our mental and physical health. Jess will sometimes send emails outside of work hours, especially when she's travelling. This does not mean that you are expected to reply immediately, or that you should be working outside of work hours. Sometimes you may, through pure coincidence, have many deadlines at the same time that require working in the evenings/weekends to meet. If you find that this is regularly happening and you are overwhelmed with your workload, bring it up with Jess and we can discuss time management strategies, re-evaluate your commitments, and potentially bring on extra collaborators to make workloads more reasonable.

7. Attending conferences and workshops

Conferences are an important way to grow your network and learn about new research. Giving a very good conference presentation can have a greater positive impact on your career than publishing the related paper - conferences are popular places to recruit and build new collaborations. The lab can usually support each member attending one conference outside of the UK per year, although conferences that are very far away may need additional consideration. Some fellows (PhDs, some postdocs) have a dedicated budget that can be used to fund conference / training attendance - you have some freedom in how this is allocated. Applying for travel grants or presenting on behalf of a project with dedicated travel funds could enable you to attend more than one international conference per year. Do not register for conferences on your own; the research office will directly pay the registration fee to avoid extra paperwork associated with reimbursements.

Keep an eye out for local workshops and symposia. The Cambridge area is a rich scientific hub and Jess is very supportive of you taking advantage of these opportunities. The lab budget should be able to cover most local events, but check with Jess before registering. Sometimes volunteers are given free registrations.

If you'd like to attend a conference, please give Jess lots of notice before abstract submission deadlines (4 weeks or more). The main reason is that our lab collaborates a lot with industry and government, and some of these institutions have mandatory internal abstract reviews and may need several weeks notice. If you are presenting a poster or giving a talk, please finish your materials in advance (2 weeks for a poster, 4 weeks for a talk). You should arrange to practice your presentation or get feedback on your poster in a lab meeting before the conference. This helps you, and it also helps newer lab members who may not have attended conferences before.

8. Collaborations

Our lab engages in many collaborations - with other academic labs (especially ones that generate data), and also industry and government scientists. Do not share project data or results externally unless you've checked with collaborators. It's easy to spend a lot of time doing analyses that someone asked for in a large group call on a whim - before investing significant time, you should understand how essential the analysis is towards the main project objectives. Make sure you know your role in any related publications as your responsibilities should change if you are in a first or middle authorship position. If you aren't sure, discuss with Jess and she will initiate discussions to clarify roles if need be. These conversations can be a bit awkward, so its best to have them early and explicitly before different parties invest significant resources.

You are encouraged to initiate your own collaborations, however please discuss with Jess before committing to anything, to ensure that the work aligns with your longterm goals and that you have enough bandwidth to deliver on any promises. Accurately estimating how long something will take is a skill that takes a long time to develop!