From OpenWetWare

Revision as of 02:45, 16 September 2010

Information for students

All students / staff / faculty are welcome to attend our open lab meetings to see what we're up to. Check here for a schedule of our meetings. NOTE: The BNL is relatively packed right now, and lab membership is currently only open to those incoming students with significant neuroscience or other relevant experience, OR those current students who have demonstrated extremely high potential in coursework or otherwise. However, opportunities for master's and/or PsyD projects (e.g. integrated literature reviews) may also exist. See this page for potential research opportunities. Continue reading this page and contact Rich for more info.

Keep a lab notebook

Read this advice and guidelines on keeping a traditional paper lab notebook. We use our lab's private blogs as electronic laboratory notebooks. If you are working on a lab project, you will be given a user name and password for logging into our system. ANYTHING that you do related to the laboratory MUST be documented in detail. Typically, I expect anything to be documented, at the very latest, within 24 hours. Ideally, this should be done in real-time (i.e., entering data directly into an entry) or at the end of each day. Consider it part of the day's job that is not completed until all data and observations are noted in the logs. It doesn't take long (really!) and it saves so much time in the long run (really!).

For a typical notebook entry, include the day of the week and date in the title (e.g., Friday, August 14, 2009) and "tag" it with some meaningfull tag(s). Any paper documents are lab property, and should be inserted into the lab's 3-ring binder with your (legible and easily identifiable) name, signature, and date. Additionally, it would be wise to take a digital picture of any paper data and upload it to your day's electronic notebook entry. REMEMBER that your lab notebook is your best friend, and should updated and referred to often.

Be prepared

Graduate school will be much easier for the properly prepared. Although the initial cost may be prohibitive, these tools will serve you through years of school and beyond:

• a usable time / action management system:
  • GTD is a good place to start. I use a combination of pen/paper, iCal, Omnifocus, and Omniplan
• hardware:
  • digital camera (the camera on most cell phones is good enough)
  • laptop - I personally prefer a Unix-based system (e.g., Mac OS X, Linux, BSD) with virtualization software for running any necessary Windows programs
• software:
  • a copy of Ethovision for behavioral analysis of videos (available here)
  • statistical software (Statistica is my current favorite and is available in the lab)
  • graphing software (Prism is my current favorite and is available in the lab)
  • "office" suite of software capable of reading / writing .doc, .ppt, and .xls files
  • reference manager / paper database software. Endnote is available free to LLU students (I personally prefer a combination of Bookends and Papers)
• we make extensive use of the following websites:
  • google calender (must have a gmail account to access the lab's calender)
  • the online file server Dropbox (must register for an account)
  • OpenWetWare.org (this wiki site) - each full-time BNL student must have a user page here
• the following books should be on the shelf of every graduate student:
  • The Compleat Academic, a research psychologist's career guide by some of my former Washington University professors
  • Elements of Style - learn how to KISS (Keep it Simple, Students)
  • Advice for Young Investigator by Santiago Ramon y Cajal
  • On Being a Scientist by the National Academy of Science
• the following book should be on the shelf of every student in the BNL:
  • What's Wrong with my Mouse by Jaqueline Crawley

Run behavioral experiments

Generally speaking, two lab members should take charge of each project as a team (except in projects where another lab's tech is helping). That means being involved from A-Z (surgery / treatment, behavioral experiments, perfusion / histology / biochemistry, statistics, and writeup). Each member should ideally be on more than one team, and teams should interact and help each other as much as possible. Members must be animal certified to be involved in projects involving animals.

• the BNL uses an apprentice model of training
• Note regarding your schedule: Expect to spend at least 20 hours / week working in the lab or on lab-related activities. It will often be hectic, and may include several days in a row of testing followed by several more of downtime. Flexibility is essential. Additionally, because animals do not follow our human schedule, you may occasionally be required to come in to the lab at night, on weekends, or on holidays. Finally, please advise me several weeks in advance of vacation or other time off.
• get LLU animal certification
• collaborative work (e.g., with Zhang lab, Obenaus lab)
• run your own project(s)
• develop new behavioral tests

Learn biological techniques

• stroke / traumatic brain injury models
• brain dissection / histology / immunohistochemistry
• biochemical assays
• stereology

Lab maintenance

• take care of animals
• keep BNL spotlessly clean and up-to-code
• build and/or maintain equipment
• data entry / graphs

Continuing education

• attend/present at weekly LLU Neuroscience Consortium meeting (Fri 10:00-12:00)
• attend/present at (ir)regularly scheduled BNL meetings – journal club, lab issues, funding opportunities, etc
• attend/present at annual Society for Neuroscience meeting and make a presentation of your conference experience in BNL meeting
• take every “neuro” class possible
• learn biochemistry (self-educate or take classes)

Research

• contribute to this wiki
• prepare literature reviews on various subjects
• help prepare grant applications / look for funding
• write up and publish experiments

Funding

• submit a Psychology department “lab enhancement” or “seed money” grant each year (November or April)
• Submit "travel grants" in order to make conference attendance more affordable.
• actively pursue extramural funding opportunities for yourself and the lab in general

Research credits available

• The "rule of thumb" for classroom units is that each unit is "worth" 1 hr spent in the classroom and 3 hrs of homework per week. Therefore, each research unit should roughly equal a 4 hr/week commitment.
• Research is a significant component of the clinical Ph.D. program, and a thesis, dissertation, and (at least submission of) a paper for publication are required.
  • for students who are not necessarily members of the BNL:
    • PSYC 594 (readings in psychology) is for students who want to get exposed to the latest research in an area of interest (no title request needed, 1-4 units)
    • PSYC 596 (directed study) is an in-depth study of a specific research area (title request required, 1-4 units)
    • PSYC 597 (supervised research / lab affililation) is intended to provide laboratory experience, learning from their research mentor, and exposure to the overall process of research (title request required, 1 unit per quarter max for 8 quarters).
  • for students who will be doing thesis and/or dissertation work in the BNL:
    • PSYC 595 (directed research) is for work related to thesis preparation, including final defense (title request needed, total of 13 units required; 1-12 units per quarter).
    • PSCY 696 (PsyD research) is for work related to a PsyD project, including final defense (title request needed, total of 8 units required; 1-4 units per quarter).
    • PSYC 697 (PhD research) is for work related to a PhD dissertation, including final defense (title request needed, total of 30 units required; 1-12 units per quarter).

General trajectory of clinical PhD students

• year 1 - classes / research
• year 2 - propose master's thesis in Fall / classes / research... try to finish master's thesis by end of year 2
• year 3 - defend master's thesis by middle of year 3 at the latest / submit finished master's project for publication / classes / research / 10 hrs per week in clinic (after 50 weeks, ~250 clinical hrs)
• year 4 - comprehensive exams in Spring of year 4 / propose dissertation in Summer / classes (fewer) / research / 20 hrs per week in clinic (should bring clinical hrs to ~750)
• year 5 - defend dissertation in summer / clinical hrs gathered up through Nov 1 count for internship placement (should normally be ~750, can be as low as 500). "Pre-internship" takes as little as 1 unit (3-5 hrs) / week
  • Because spending 20 hrs / week in the clinic will soak up most of your available lab time, clinical PhD students in the BNL may want to consider reducing year 4's clinical hours to 10 hrs/wk and finishing the remaining 10 hrs/wk in year 5.
    • This means that your total clinical hours as of Nov 1 of year 5 will be on the low side (~500 hrs), which means that you should be relatively productive (i.e., publish / present) to offset your low clinical hours.

Determining extent of contribution and authorship for a project

Rate the extent of your contribution for each item according to the following scale: (borrowed and modified from Miguel Roig)

1. not at all
2. a little
3. a moderate amount
4. a lot
5. a whole lot

• Introduction
  • conceptualized the study (idea / hypothesis / variables)
  • wrote a review of the literature
• Methods
  • experimental design
  • constructed and/or tweaked special equipment and/or tests for the study
  • cared for animals
• Data collection
  • ran animals / recorded observations
• Data analysis
  • entered data
  • checked data for accuracy
  • planned analyses
  • ran analyses
  • prepared graphs and summary of analysis results
• Writing
  • wrote Intro
  • wrote Methods
  • wrote Results
  • wrote Discussion
• Presenting
  • presented poster / talk
• Other
  • identified potential confounds
  • identified future directions
  • organization / management skills
  • dedication to the project