Just a reminder that if you’re mulling seminar/conference speakers, these New PIs probably gave some pretty impressive job talks! And the list might even inspire some ideas for manuscript reviewers or guest editors.
newpislack.wordpress.com/new…
It's been a fun take-over today! Thanks for hosting me, and I'll see y'all back home on my own account @Annika_Barber. To sum up my New PI experience so far:
💜 AFB
Of course, the people who really run the Barber lab are the lab members. Lucky for me, I hired Mike, the World's Best Lab Manager, right when I started! Genuinely can't imagine getting to now without him. And of course, we've since grown!
Who really runs the @Annika_Barber lab? Well, I can tell you who *thinks* he runs the lab, and who is also the most popular lab member. That would be Mister Peebles. ~AFB
The most important lifeline as a NewPI is community. I have been #unironicallyblessed with an amazing community of colleagues from my postdoc lab, friends I made through NewPI Slack, and the incredible Drosophila research community. #flypeoplearethebest
As a grad student, I thought I needed to meet "important people" at conferences to form a professional network. But I realize now that the most important connections I've made are with peers. And one day soon, we'll be the important people at the conferences! 😆 ~AFB
Do I have definitive advice on starting a lab in a pandemic? Ha! No. But here are some of the things I did that have been useful (I also probably did a lot of dumb stuff). ~AFB
Recently we've implemented quarterly SMART goal setting. We take a lab meeting each quarter to review the past quarter's progress as a team, and set our writing and experimental goals for the upcoming quarter. Breaking goals into SMART components is challenging, but so helpful!
Q: Sure, *you* love rhythms, but why should *I* care?
A: Even if you don't study circadian rhythms directly, controlling for time-of-day effects can get rid of experimental noise in a wide variety of experiments, whether you measure behavior, physiology or gene expression. ~AFB
While circadian rhythms are conserved from cyanobacteria to insects to fish and mammals, flies are the #supermodelorganism of chronobiology! They even got a Nobel Prize for it! nobelprize.org/prizes/medici…
What *is* a circadian rhythm? It's a biological process that repeats about once every 24 hours. There are a few official rules to meet the scientific definition of a rhythm. Rule zero is assumed...
(AFB)