Lab culture, mentorship and supervision

I generally aim for each PhD student and postdoc in the lab to have their own project that fits within the lab’s broad research interest, with the goal of avoiding a sense of competition. That said, I always encourage (and will sometimes suggest) connections between projects if I think collaborating is to everyone’s benefit. Students (MSc, BSc, RA) will be linked to one of the main ongoing projects.

I aspire to have each person in the lab working on the most exciting thing they can think of, subject to constraints of feasibility and uniqueness (from Josh McDermott).

I expect all lab members to:

• Communicate openly and honestly.
• Treat your colleagues, participants and lab equipment with respect.
• Be a team player and good academic citizen: help others, collaborate and share ideas.
• Take ownership of your research project. You will soon be the expert on the topic!
• Know the limits of your knowledge and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Admit when you are wrong, or made a mistake; be honest with yourself, and with your peers and colleagues.
  • Examine your assumptions and expect to be wrong. A lot. Ask someone to be your ‘code buddy’ and replicate your figures, from the data, from scratch.
• Knowing how long to keep trying something, and when to ask for help, is a tremendously useful skill. A useful guideline: if you know what next steps to take (keywords to Google, instructions to follow, control analyses to run) then take them first. If you can no longer identify how to move forward, don’t waste time being stuck and ask for help or advice. - To ask good questions (of me, or anyone else); indicate what you’ve tried so far, what your current best answer is, and what specific guidance you need.
• Take a proactive role in your career development.
  • Take the time to explore your interests, to try things out, and to look widely at careers that may suit you. Ashley Juavinett’s book is a great start.
  • Let me know if you want to attend a conference, apply for a (travel) grant, or give a talk - ideally several weeks in advance, so we can prepare together.
• Organize your work, and practice good project and time management.
  • When we meet, take notes and especially write down the specific action items we’ve agreed on. Not only does this help structure your work, it can also serve as a great reminder for when I inevitably contradict my past self.
  • Must-read: Allen D (2001) Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Penguin.
  • Stick to a consistent and clear organisation scheme for your data (e.g. this one); keep your code version controlled on GitHub; comment your analysis workflows; organize code reviews; learn about best practices in software development. Your future self will thank you.

Expectations for PhD students and postdocs:

• Be present in the lab during regular hours, at least a few days a week. I generally encourage you to work during regular office hours. However, apart from times of e.g. data collection or deadlines, the flexibility of science is one of its main perks: take advantage of this, and find out what schedule works best for you.
  • If I occasionally email you at unusual times, do not feel obliged to read or respond immediately; email is an asynchronous medium, so set your own boundaries.
  • Inform me about longer absences (sickness, vacation, working remotely, conferences, etc).
• Participate in lab/institute/department events to benefit from the social and scientific interactions (basically, most events I put in the lab calendar). I strongly encourage you to join social events organized at work when you can, irrespective of whether I’m there.
• Get into the habit of asking questions. A good strategy may be to start by asking at least one question in our own lab meeting, then in larger meetings (e.g. with external speakers). Asking good questions is a valuable skill to craft, it signals a culture of shared learning, and interactivity is much more fun and interesting for the presenter.
• Meet with me approximately weekly to discuss your project and progress. During our first months of working together, we will establish a workflow for these (see below for a template); the more easily we can check off previous plans, and the more you can show me figures and results, the more we can discuss interesting science. Of course, I’m happy to discuss confusing/exciting results anytime in between these. Send me an overview of what we agreed on afterwards, so we are both on the same page on what to do.
• Help each other, and help students/RAs with their projects. I aim to ensure that it’s always clear which students work on what project, and what I expect of you in terms of supervision.
• Finish what you started: as your project matures, you will increasingly be in charge of your own goals and the steps necessary to meet them. Find a project-management tool that works for you, so that I do not have to chase loose ends that we previously discussed.
• Implement good open science practices: see e.g. these guidelines by Sam Gershman.
• Keep up with the literature, and send me interesting papers that I may have missed!

For postdocs, I also expect you to actively look out for grants that you may to apply for; to help shape lab culture; and to mentor students in the lab.

Expectations for MSc and BSc students:

• Clarify with me whether we are doing strictly confirmatory or exploratory/pilot work (most MSc projects fall into the latter category). Don’t be afraid to look at your data and visualize it in multiple ways! See page 48-53 here for examples. Of course, you should never formulate your hypotheses and then test on the same data, but this does not mean it’s a good idea to apply a statistical test without having taken a look to see if your data make sense (‘positive controls’). See also here.
• Be aware of the guidelines around your thesis/internship (see BrightSpace), and keep track of the timing of the project and your plan. I see my role primarily as your scientific advisor, and the more you prepare the administrative parts of the project, the more we can talk science together.
• Email/message me for on-demand meetings, clarifications, etc. Basically, keep me in the loop so we can resolve issues quickly when they arise.
• Make a clear timeplan for when you’ll send me drafts/materials for feedback, and stick to it; that way, I can block time in my calendar and get back to you quickly.
• Enjoy the learning experience!
  • I’m here to guide and advise you, not to be your teacher. In a course, your goal may be to get a good grade for an assignment and mine is to assess your work; a research project is a different game where we’re both learning and I’m happy to be shown wrong.

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I aspire and promise to:

• Support you in your research and career.
• I will continually assess my own practices as a mentor and supervisor, and improve my own practices to help you flourish as a scientist and person.
  • You can make use of the Cognitive Psychology Unit’s mentoring scheme (ask Sander Nieuwenhuis).
  • The university encourages a yearly ‘functioneringsgesprek’ (see this form). See below for my own mentoring agreement form. I aim to have a big-picture ‘review meeting’ with postdocs and PhD students twice a year.
• Respond to questions and give feedback in a timely manner.
  • I aim to respond to emails in a few days, or at most a week. If something is urgent (e.g. a problem with data collection, a sudden deadline for a grant application) I will usually respond more quickly. For really urgent or out-of-hours matters, call me.
  • If you want feedback on your work, a letter of reference, or other input from me, please give me a heads-up a few weeks in advance (e.g. as soon as you know that you’re applying for something, or when you start writing a draft). I can then block off time to go over your work and give feedback quickly. Note that if you then can’t meet this deadline, it may go to the bottom of my priority list and I may be less inclined to prioritize this in the future. So plan ahead, and allow yourself (and me) some buffers.
• Create a fun and supportive learning environment.
  • Peer review can be tough and unpredictable, so we will celebrate papers when they are submitted and posted as a preprint.

Mentoring up - resources

• Zerzan JT, Hess R, Schur E, Phillips RS, Rigotti N (2009) Making the Most of Mentors: A Guide for Mentees. Academic Medicine 84:140. link
• Handout from Niv & Murray’s mentoring course
• Hour-long Growing Up in Science session about mentoring up (link, search for ‘mentoring up’).

Meetings

Please join the weekly CogPsy meeting and weekly lab meeting (ask Anne for access to lab calendar), and feel free to suggest topics/papers.

For Bachelor/Master student projects, I normally start with meetings on demand: when you either get stuck or have something to show me (one of these should happen every few weeks), book a meeting through Calendly and send me a short description beforehand. For longer projects (PhD/postdoc), we’ll start with regular meetings (e.g. once a week, once every two weeks). Talk to me and find out what works for you.

Before our weekly supervision meetings, fill out this template to help us structure our discussion. Afterwards, email the action points we agreed on. Most meetings shouldn’t be longer than 45 minutes to an hour; but of course if we need more time/relaxed atmosphere, let me know.

Mentoring agreement

With each lab member who’s here for more than a few months, we’ll draft a mentoring agreement that is evaluated at least every year.