Cheng Lab: Expectations
This is a document about expectations: current/future lab members can see how we want to build a lab that helps them to succeed.
What you can expect from me:
Advice: You can expect me to push you towards greater independence and help you achieve good results. More specifically:
General directions: You can expect me to share my overview of the research field, and in particular, what is the frontier. I will give you my honest opinion about what your scientific strengths and weaknesses are, how to best utilize the strengths, as well as how to improve the weaknesses.
Specific directions for each project: You can expect me to propose several possible research projects, and you are encouraged to propose yours. Then we can discuss and pick the ones that suit you the most. During each project, you can expect me to help you interpret difficult results, challenge your reasoning, discuss possible next steps, and help prioritize when needed. As you gain experience, I will increasingly expect you to propose your own interpretation and next steps before asking for my view. My goal is to guide your thinking rather than replace it.
Meetings: You can expect me to meet with you regularly to discuss progress and future plans. The baseline for the meetings will be about once per week, and each meeting will last about 30 minutes. Within this time, you will have my undivided attention and I will not look at my phone, check emails, etc. The frequency and the length of the meetings can be adjusted depending on the stage of your research.
Emails and slack: You can expect me to return emails or slack messages within a reasonable amount of time, whenever possible. If somehow I don’t respond within a few days for no obvious reason (e.g. on leave/holidays), please send a reminder. I prefer to have more systematic discussions during the weekly meetings, but if there is anything that needs to be resolved urgently and none of the other group members can help with, please don’t hesitate to contact me via email, slack, or just knock on the door of my office.
Papers: You can expect me to help you prepare papers and edit drafts of written work. I will provide more help for first or second-year PhD students on writing papers: I will probably write an outline of the paper and rewrite certain sections. When you send me a draft, you can expect a response within 1-2 weeks in most cases.
Annual reviews: You can expect me to go over your development plan with you at least once per year to see if you are on track for your goals and help you overcome any challenges.
Career development: You can expect me to be supportive of your career development. More concretely:
Reference letters: You can expect me to send reference letters on time. Clear and advanced (>= 1 week) notice is generally expected.
Grants and fellowships: You can expect me to encourage and support you to apply for your own grants or fellowships. If appropriate, I can share my past proposals with you. You can expect me to provide general advice about grant writing, and provide broad feedback on the drafts of proposals.
Job applications: You can expect me to give advice on job applications, including faculty, postdoc, staff scientists and industrial positions. If I know an opening that may be appropriate for you, I will pass the information. Generally, I encourage you to do a dry run of the job talk in front of the lab, so we can all give feedback.
Network: You can expect me to introduce you to my scientific collaborators and friends, whenever possible.
Financial and research support: You can expect me to provide full funding for your salary (in Chemsitry department, 3 semesters of GSI + the rest is GSR), a moderate amount of cpu/gpu hours on the savio cluster (need to write short proposals for substantial computational needs) and other reasonable research costs (e.g. a laptop, a standing desk, books, conferences, scientific visits) during your contract.
Conferences: You can expect me to send you to one conference/workshop/school per year if possible (preferably more if we can afford it or if you get your own funding). I will not always keep track of which conference is suitable for you, so please keep an eye on it and propose which ones you want to go to!
Fairness, diversity and wellbeing: You can expect me to do my best to promote a fair, diverse and happy work environment. If there is any incident that makes you feel unjust or discriminated against, please do not hesitate to talk to me face-by-face. If you have any issue related to your physical or mental wellbeing, please let me know.
Family-friendly policy: You can expect me to be understanding of your family plans. If you have certain family duties, we can make a work plan that best accommodates that.
What I expect from you:
Good research:
I expect you to conduct research with the utmost scientific integrity. Never manipulate data or plagiarize written work (even if it’s your own previous work).
I expect you to push yourself out of your comfort zone and do something that you thought was not possible. I expect you to try to become “the expert” of a certain topic - not just more knowledgeable compared with me, but more knowledgeable than anyone in the world. For research output, I expect you to prioritize quality over quantity.
I expect you to develop a broad overview of the field. This means having a good knowledge of the key literature and the history of the field, but also having your own interpretation.
Research ownership, validation, and independence
I expect you to gradually take increasing intellectual ownership of your research as you progress. Independence does not mean working alone or never asking for help. It means understanding why you are doing a calculation, what you expect to happen, how you will determine whether the result is correct, and what the next logical step should be.
Research is inherently uncertain, and mistakes and failed approaches are normal. However, before bringing a technical or scientific problem to me, I expect you to first make a serious effort to diagnose it yourself. In particular, you should be able to explain:
• What did you expect to happen, and why?
• What actually happened?
• What possible explanations have you considered?
• What tests have you performed to distinguish between them?
• What do you currently think is the most likely explanation and the next step?
Producing a number, plot, simulation, or piece of code is not the same as producing a research result. Validation is part of the research itself. Before showing a result, you should make a reasonable effort to establish that it is correct. Depending on the problem, this may include checking known limits, dimensional consistency, convergence, conservation laws or physical constraints, analytically solvable cases, alternative implementations, reproduction of previous results, or internal consistency between different formulations. When you present a result, you should ideally be able to answer the question: “How do you know this is correct?”
I do not expect error-free work. I do expect you to develop increasingly effective ways of finding your own errors before they propagate into later calculations, figures, or manuscripts.
When something is presented as ready for my review, I expect that you have already checked the underlying calculation or implementation, inspected the results for obvious inconsistencies, incorporated relevant feedback from previous discussions, and made sure that the text, equations, figures, notation, code, and data are mutually consistent.
My role is to help with scientific direction, difficult conceptual bottlenecks, interpretation, prioritization, and high-level feedback. I will sometimes work directly on derivations, code, analysis, or writing when this is the most effective way to move a project forward. This should not be interpreted as meaning that I will eventually complete work that has stalled. If I step in directly, I expect you to understand what I did, verify it where possible, and take responsibility for the subsequent work.The amount of detailed guidance that is appropriate for a first-year PhD student should not remain constant throughout a PhD. Increasing independence, judgment, reliability, and ability to self-correct are important measures of research progress.
Good citizenship:
I expect you to treat all of your lab mates with respect. Each person is an important contributor to our team that we can learn from.
I expect you to support and help your fellow lab mates, particularly the new members of the group.
I expect you to do your fair share of the “chores” of the lab, e.g. compiling codes on clusters, maintaining lab repos, organizing visitors' schedules, etc.
Wellbeing: I expect you to actively take care of your own wellbeing. Sorry if it sounds obvious, but I thought it is a useful reminder for many academics. If there is anything that the whole group can do to help your wellbeing, please let us know.
Data management:
I expect you adopt a good file management system for intermediate data, e.g. simulation folders should be lucidly named and maybe accompanied by a brief README file to help you keep track of what has been done. In addition, it is crucial to regularly back up important data. The lab has a Dropbox Professional subscription, and all the intermediate data can be stored there.
I recommend you to have a “lab book” to organize your thoughts, todos, and progress.
I expect all the data points to come with error estimations, whenever the statistical uncertainty can be estimated. Please plot your data together with errorbars.
For each paper, I expect every step to be reproducible (see the FAIR principle). You should construct and maintain a GitHub repository that contains all the necessary input files and data analysis scripts to reproduce the results.
Communications and team building:
If you don’t understand, ask questions, don’t be silent!
I expect you to attend all of the private meetings with me and the lab meetings, unless there is a reason why you cannot attend, in which case please let me know in advance.
To make the most out of the group/one-on-one/project meetings, please make a quick list of new results, questions and plans at least a few hours before the meetings. Don't spend more than 10-15 minutes on making the list - it should just a quick note. For the results, make a quick plot or prepare to demonstrate them on-the-fly during the meeting. For each important result, be prepared to explain not only what you obtained, but why you believe it is correct.
After the project meetings with me or other collaborators, I expect you to make a brief list, summarizing what has been discussed, problems that are solved or are still remaining, and future work to do. There is no need to send me each list, but please keep all the records as they help structure your work.
I expect you to be communicative of what you need to be productive and happy. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you think there is anything about my supervision or the lab management that can be improved.
I encourage you to try to attend most of the lab activities (annual retreat, Friday afternoon drinks, lunches together, ...), and help organize some.
Career development:
I expect you to think strategically about your career plans. Actively go to conferences, network, and practice skills for giving talks.
For postdocs, I expect you to try to pursue funding opportunities. This is an essential skill for all independent researchers, and also helps you to consolidate your future research plans. As an additional advantage, if you have your own fellowship, you have more freedom to work on your own project. In comparison, if you are supported by the funding of the lab, I expect that >=90% of your time is devoted to the projects of the lab.
Working hours:
Office hours: I expect you to be present in the lab for most of the hours between 10am-4pm on weekdays (except for holidays) as that is when most of the lab activities and collaborative discussions occur. The remainder of your work time can be whenever you wish and flexibility in schedule is a perk of the job. Please let me know of any full days missed in advance. Please inform me about any leaves.
Working from home: There is no requirement on how long you should work. I expect you to pick a work schedule that is best for you and for your development. There will be periods of very high intensity work to meet deadlines/goals and periods you just need to just rest, slow down and reflect. The general guideline is, work hard and stay happy. If at any point your current work schedule interferes with your wellbeing, prioritize your wellbeing.
Problem solving:
For scientific problems, please do not treat meetings with me as the first stage of debugging. Before asking for help, try to formulate the problem clearly, identify plausible explanations, and perform reasonable tests. When possible, bring me your diagnosis and proposed next step rather than only the observation that something is wrong. At the same time, do not remain stuck for weeks on a problem that could benefit from discussion. Good judgment means knowing when to investigate independently and when to ask for help. The goal is not to minimize communication, but to make scientific discussions higher quality and increasingly driven by your own reasoning.
For administrative issues, please contact relevant departments (HR, IT, health, etc) or our administrator for help first. Let me know if these do not work.
For technological issues, I expect you to habitually exploit online resources and develop a systematic workflow for debugging. Please do not ask for my help whenever there is a bug in your code, a PYTHON library not correctly installed, or a code not compiled on a cluster, etc. The overall suggestions are: 1) read the manual, 2) search StackExchange and the GitHub issue page, 3) use CONDA, 4) google the error messages that you are getting, 5) chatgpt. Please make a good effort by yourself before asking others for help. When you do ask for help, make the bug reproducible, describe the problem clearly, and include a log file.
Notes:
Last update: 30 Aug 2026
Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any idea on how these expectations can be modified and improved.
I took a lot of material from: