Lab communication

In person meetings

Individual meetings

• Mondays, every week, scheduled via Outlook calendar
• Prepare in advance
  • What are upcoming events (2-3 months; e.g. committee meeting, conference, meetings with collaborators)
  • Progress and results
  • Other activities (including non-scientific like courses attended, tutorials, infrastructure)
  • Next goals (list next steps in research and what tasks are needed to accomplish them)
  • Roadblocks/needs (list critical needs that are/you anticipate are blocking progress - especially things you need Andre to do. e.g. setup a VM, learn about a framework, download lots of data, more space in cluster)
  • Literature (indicate a paper you found interesting/relevant that Andre should read or that should be discussed in a journal club)
  • The above can be shared with Andre in advance (e.g. in a markdown file)
• The meta layer / check-in:
  • Talk about how you are doing, progress, frustration, goals beyond research
  • Once per month, more often if needed
• The scheduled meetings should not prevent you from reaching out to Andre at any time if needed (in person, via email, chat, phone)!

Lab meetings

• Tuesdays, early week (12:30)
• Schedule:
  • The schedule for the presentations is set by Andre and available here.
• Format:
  • Housekeeping (announcements, scheduling)
    • Any update relevant to the lab by anyone
  • Quick round reviewing week progress (20 min max, 3-5 min per person):
    • What did you try to achieve? (broadly and specifically)
    • What were the challenges?
  • One or more scheduled presentations (20-30 min) including:
    • Scientific question/hypothesis
    • Background (what has been done/can we build on)
    • Approach/methodology
    • Results
    • Outlook/next steps

Code review

• Every 2 weeks (to begin, then maybe more sparse)
• 1h30 to 2h00 duration
• The goal is to improve everyone's programming skills/process - not shaming!
• Typical workflow:
  • Nominate one script/function to study (e.g. caused problems or is inefficient, not Pythonic, etc...) OR ask Andre before hand to look at a repository to select one piece of code to focus on.
  • Ideally only 200-400 lines of code at one time
  • Everyone studies the goals of the code and the implementation
  • Together try to assess:
    1. Readability and documentation
    2. Architecture
    3. Re-usability
    4. Additional: packaging, speed, security, etc...
  • End by highlighting one new Github repository that you find cool/useful for the group - everyone quickly installs and explore
  • Occasionally/alternatively we can talk about the meta part: cluster issues, installation, text editors, .bashrc setup, etc...

Strategic collaborative projects (SCPs)

• Everyone is encouraged to participate in more than one depending on interest/relevance
• SCP2: "Tissue biology in health, aging, and disease":
  • One meeting per month
  • Two organizers (generally from De Rooij and Rendeiro labs)
  • Mailing list: scp2@cemmat.onmicrosoft.com
  • Send papers with the usual format/tag in subject: [paper] <title>, and body: <title> \n <url> \n <comment>

Hackatons

• one afternoon every 2-3 months
• ideas:
  • CeMMome (involve more people?):
    1. Literature mining: papers, research reports, press releases
    2. Friday seminar audio transcription
    3. Data Science:
    4. What topics are there at CeMM?
    5. How did they evolve over time?
    6. Individuals:
  • Configuring "hilde"
  • Lab website
  • Deep learning basics
  • AI art
  • ...

Yearly kick start/team building meeting

• Topics:
  • Values
  • Personality
  • Motivation
  • Feedback
  • Goals and expectations
  • Research integrity
  • Jointly write a Code of Conduct
• Revisit yearly or when new members joint

See also the "asking questions" section on the learning note.

Messaging

Use the lab's mailing list (rendeirogroup@int.cemm.at) for searchable, archivable content (announcements, scheduling, papers).

Use Microsoft Teams for non-archival content (curiosities, non-urgent questions, fun stuff).

Use Signal's lab group for quick messages (coordinating movement, real-time info, urgent questions, fun stuff).

Papers

Feel free to send around any paper you find interesting or relevant.

Send it via email (rendeirogroup@int.cemm.at) in the following format:

• To: rendeirogroup@int.cemm.at
• Subject: [paper] <title>
• Body: <title> \n <url> \n <comment>

Fields with <> should be replaced with content.

Lab retreats

[!CAUTION] TODO

Social meetings and celebrations

Social gatherins for example in celebrations of personal and professional achievements are welcome and encouraged.

They should however follow the guidelines and rules from CeMM.

Edit this page on GitHub