Lab Meetings

Winter/Spring 2020: Wednesdays 10am-12pm in 5th floor Meeting Room (5-2042)

Schedule:

Long-term format ideas:

1) Project presentations (full meeting)

• • discuss/update on a full project - incorporate background, major questions/hypothesis, on-going experiments/analyses, current results

  • On-going project: use this to get ideas for next steps, how to close a loop, feedback on your analyses/interpretations

  • Nearly-finished project: use this to get feedback on figures, presentation/story lines (tell us to look out for these things!)

  • Practice presentation: use this to get feedback on presentation style, story lines, figures/slides, etc (tell us details of presentation format and what to look out for!)

2) Round-robin (each: 15m and 3 slides (or one demonstration) MAX - less is ok)

• • eventually: no main project result presentations! (for now, that's fine)

  • Collaborative: "I'm helping out with..."

  • Excitement: "Finding of the month: tip/trick/broad scientific trivia"

  • Exploratory: "I'm curious about..."

  • Technical: "Why isn't this working?!?"

  • Instructional: "I can to teach you how to..."

3) Chalk talks and elevator pitches - see link for more details on how to prepare these

4) Literature review (~2 papers, 30min each)

• • Focus your thoughts on big picture questions of:

    • How did the studies contribute to current knowledge?

    • What are the merits of the novel techniques they used?

    • How did the studies address open questions in RNA biology/genomics?

  • Goal: dissect rationale/contributions of each paper and why these aspects constitute a significant enough advance to merit publication

  • Objective: "Debate"-type format to guide our discussion to actively engage with each other on both sides of the two perspectives:

    • Perspective A: AUTHORS - making arguments "for" the publication of each paper on behalf of the authors

      • What question is this study addressing that hasn't been answered before?

      • How do the experiments/analyses presented address this question(s)?

      • What are the main conclusions and scientific doors opened for future experiments?

    • Perspective B: REVIEWERS - finely critique the paper in a traditional review role

      • Is this study actually addressing a novel question or burning hypothesis that has never been addressed before?

      • Do the experiments/analyses presented satisfactorily address this question and what would make a stronger case (controls, experiments, etc)?

      • Does this study raise more questions than it answers? Are the interpretations discussed supported by the data presented in the results?

5) Lab Discussion

• • Intended to provide a forum for lab members to bring up any larger issues that should be discussed/dealt with in lab, including but not limited to:

    • going around to talk about all the projects going on in the group: specific research issues, set-backs, future directions

    • equipment, SOPs, maintenance/lab jobs

    • new directions to take projects, lab, research

    • organizing lab social events

- Lab hackathon?

- Other ideas?