Lab Safety:  You safety and health is my primary concern and should not be taken lightly.  No one should ever feel unsafe in the lab, and if you have concerns please feel free to talk to Kaitlyn or I about them.  Never hesitate to ask what something is, how to handle it, or how to operate equipment. 

• Lab coats, gloves, and goggles should be worn at all times the lab.

• You should always wash your hands after an experiment or before returning to the office space.

• Material Safety Data Sheets (s) for all the chemicals in the lab are available on Lab Archives as attachment files. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the risks involved with any chemical you use. Drexel’s Department of Environmental Health and Safety also maintains an online database of MSDSs: https://drexel.edu/facilities/healthSafety/ResearchSafety/ChemicalSafety/SafetyDataSheets/

 

Mental health and other resources:  Your mental health and overall well-being are of utmost importance.  Research is hard and involves a lot of failure and everyone struggles with it. Plus, life can be challenging and scary and difficult and I know your life does not stop when you come into work. I will never be angry or look down on you if you are having a hard time, and I encourage you to ask for help or speak with me if you need to. In addition, if at any point in the lab you feel, because of another lab member or someone else, that you are not in a safe and supportive environment, please come to me right away and talk to me about it so we can figure out the best way to stop the problems and get you the support you need. 

 

If you do not want to talk with me please take advantage of the resources that Drexel has available to trainees and students, including a counseling center and medical and mental health emergency lines. There is also a university Ombudsman you can speak to about problems with me or anyone else confidentially. Please do not hesitate to utilize these resources.

 

National and local mental health crisis hotlines are also available, phone numbers are below.  If you are unsure if you are in need of support, there is no harm in reaching out to these lines.

• National suicide prevention lifeline: 800-273-TALK (800-273-8255)

• Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

• Philadelphia Crisis line: 215-686-4420

• https://www.philaccess.org/resources/crisis/

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Training: Biosafety (BioRaft) training must be completed before being allowed to work in the lab. Once you are registered in Drexel’s system, I will assign you training protocols from Bioraft that you can access through your email.

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            - General lab protocol training will be done with the lab member you are shadowing or Krisna.

            - There are no dumb questions and the more questions you ask, the more prepared you will be                        when working independently.

            - Never be afraid to ask how to do something or where something is, everyone would rather answer                your questions than have you make a mistake.

 

Working with HIV: A lot of our research focuses on HIV, so there are certain risks involved in many of our experiments. Everyone who has permission to work with HIV will be trained by Kaitlyn and/or myself, but even if you are not working with HIV, there are some risks involved in working in our lab. Even though rotation students, undergraduates and most master’s students are not permitted to work with HIV, you may be helping other lab members who are working with HIV, or you may be in an area or dealing with waste that had HIV in it. Because of this, everyone in the lab must familiarize themselves with potential HIV exposure emergencies.  “What to do if you are exposed to HIV during an Experiment” is an HIV exposure plan posted on Dropbox and hung up in the cell culture room.  Read and familiarize yourself with this plan in case you or your lab members are ever exposed to HIV. If you have any questions or concerns about working with HIV or any potential risk you may be in, do not hesitate to ask me at any time.

 

Lab Citizenship: Being a strong lab means working together to make sure both the research and the research environment are great.  The best way to help with this is to make sure to be a good lab citizen.

This mean that you need to 

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          - Clean-up after yourself. Clean-up should be considered part of your experiment and should be                      incorporated into your planning.

          - Do your lab chores and help others do theirs. Try to minimize your impact on others and remember              that just because it is not your month to do something does not abrogate your responsibility to                      clean-up and maintain supplies after you finish. Remember, you are responsible for cleaning up                    your experiments and your office space, not the monthly chores person.

          - If you use the last of a shared resource, like running buffer or pipette tips, it is your responsibility to                replace it as soon as your experiment is finished.

          - If you fill a waste container, aspirator, tips bucket, sharps container, etc … it is your responsibility to                  empty it and replace it as soon as your experiment is finished.

          - Be considerate of your fellow lab members. If you see something is running very low, but that you                are not going to finish it (i.e. tips, serological pipettes, tubes, etc…), replace them as you finish your                  experiment. It is always your job to make sure you have the supplies you need BEFORE starting                      your experiment, but if you clean up after yourself and leave the room well stocked, everyone’s                     experiments will run smoother.

          - Be considerate of other people’s schedules. If someone has signed up for a time-slot or space to                  run an experiment, make sure you are not in their way at the designated time, or if you are going to              be running late, try to let them know ahead of time. If you are finishing early, let the person who                      signed up after you know. And if someone is working against a deadline, think about adjusting your              schedule to help them out if they need it.

 

Lab Notebooks and Data Handling: All lab members are required to have and maintain a digital lab notebook using lab archives. Dr. Gaskill will create and assign a notebook to you when you start.  It is your job to keep a temporal record of your experiments in this notebook - other copies of your protocols, data sheets, graphs, etc ... can you on our shared Dropbox, but the notebook should be an active record of what you did when and how it went. 

 

          - The purpose of this notebook is so that you, or anyone else, can go back to any particular                                experiment and determine how it was run, if anything unusual happened and what the results                        were. It is also important as a record of your work, to show what you did, when you did it and what                the results were. ​​

          - The notebook should have a record of each experiment you do, starting with what you are doing,                  why you are doing and what you anticipate the results will be. 

           - At the notebook should be updated regularly with experimental details while they are fresh in                 your mind. This means that you should add annotations or thoughts or comments about what did                not work, to the specific sheet/page/folder that each experiment is in. It is better to add too much                information than not enough, so don’t worry about adding things that seem irrelevant (media was                  slightly off-color, machine made a funny whirring, it took 5 extra minutes to lyse these cells                              because the chair broke, etc …). The little details that happen during an experiment can often be                    helpful in the future and to data analysis.  Your future self and other lab members will be thankful                  that you wrote down the mistake, timing, color tube, math, etc .. that made this experiment unique.

          - In addition to updating your notebook daily, you will need to update the appropriate data sheets                    in the lab Dropbox Folder. You will also need to BACK-UP YOUR DATA. Although Dropbox is a nice                cloud backup, your data should also be present on your computer and somewhere else (ideally a                back-up drive that is not on site).

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Commonly used websites/software:

• Office (i.e. excel/word/powerpoint): Used for most everything, manuscripts, presentations, analyses, etc ...

• Dropbox: The Gaskill lab Dropbox is the heart of the lab, and you should keep copies of all your data sheets, protocols, templates, lab meetings, posters, applications, etc … (basically everything) in the appropriate folder on Dropbox.

  • Most of the time this will be your own folder, but sometimes you will be adding things to a shared folder. This will make more sense as you start to perform and analyze different experiments.

  • Your folder should be organized well enough that PJ can look into it and understand what everything is and when it was made. That means naming things appropriately, carefully labeling different drafts of papers, data sheets, etc … Avoid making duplicate files and spending time each week maintaining your folder so that it is easy to access and use.

  • Only members of the Gaskill lab are allowed to access the Dropbox, so please do not access it from unsecure computers or with anyone outside the lab.

• AirTable: All of our protocols and inventories, as well as the Gaskill lab starting reading list, and useful lists of book and other things, are stored on Airtable. You can download anything you need from here. If you make a new protocol, or want to add to our inventories, or reading lists, you do so on Airtable – Kaitlyn can show you how to use it.

• LabArchives: All of your digital lab notebooks are on lab archives. You will be assigned a notebook when you start in the lab and will maintain it until you leave. In addition, the entire lab inventory is on Lab Archives so if you want to see if we have something, to find where something is or to see the material safety data sheet associated with your reagent, you can get that information on Lab Archives. If you are having trouble using the inventory, please ask anyone to show you how to use it. 

• GraphPad Prism: This is our standard analysis tool, and once you join the lab you will be given a license so you can run this on your personal laptop. It is also available on several of the lab computers. GraphPad is used to make all the graphs we display in posters and publications, and is also used to store our data in datasheets and run basic statistical analyses.

• HCS Studio Cell Analysis Software, ImageJ and NIS Elements: These three different image analysis packages are used for acquisition, editing and analysis of images obtained from the CX7 high content scanner (CX7), as well from other sources. Use of these programs requires a bit of training, and more likely you will become familiar with one or more of them as you get comfortable with the assays you are running and learn specifically how to apply these programs to your experiments.

• Python and associated platforms: The CX7 generates very large data sets for each experiment run, so analysis of the cell-level data from tens and hundreds of thousands of cells can overwhelm Excel and Prism. To account for this, our lab is increasingly using code written in Python and associated graphical and statistics packages (i.e. Seaborn) to accelerate data processing and to perform more comprehensive and complex data analysis.

 

Identifying, locating and purchasing supplies and reagents:  As mentioned above, everything in the lab is inventoried and mapped (location in the lab) on Lab Archives and in the Dropbox. We also use Lab Archives program to request different items by sending requests to Krisna. Soon after you start, Krisna will train you on the use of this program.

• Before you order anything, check if we have it on Lab Archives.

• If you are not sure where something is, or if we have it, check on Lab Archives and use the lab map. Sometimes things get moved, are out of stock, or are being used so it’s always ok to ask other lab members where something is.

• If you use the last of something/notice a something is getting low, always let Krisna know we are running out. You can do this in person or by submitting a request to Krisna to order more through Lab Archives.

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Lab Emergencies/ Possible Emergencies: If there is a lab emergency and I am not here, call me at 858-405-6752 or the departmental operations manager, Darin Ipe, at 267-616-9663.  Emergencies include (but are not limited to):

• Refrigerator or freezer alarms are going off

• Refrigerators or freezers are warm

• Incubator alarms are going off

• Incubator temperature/ CO2 are not what they should be

• Flooding or water leaking

IF YOU AREN’T SURE IF IT’S AN EMERGENCY, ASK! AND IF NO ONE IS HERE,

ERR ON THE CONSERVATIVE SIDE AND CALL ME.

 

Lab Hierarchy: There is no lab hierarchy, and no matter what your status in the lab, from post-doctoral fellow to undergraduate volunteer, everyone's research, time and tasks are just as important as everyone else's. Just because you are working with someone more senior or experienced, it does not mean they are in charge of you, it means you are working together and using their experience to direct your work. This also means you should respect everyone else’s time and effort the way that you would like them to respect yours. As the PI, I make the final decisions on many issues regarding purchases, research and projects but I will always solicit advice and feedback from those involved before making significant decisions.

 

Communication: Communication and collaboration is vital to the success of the lab. Talking through your ideas, problems, and data with other people in and out of the lab will only benefit you.

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          - My door is almost always open and you should feel free to come talk to me or email me about any               questions that you have regarding the lab, the program, scientific careers or really anything at all.

          - My job as your mentor is to support you and to help train and guide you through this part of your                    life, so that you get to where you need to be when you finish. I cannot give you success, but I will                  do my utmost to give you the tools to achieve it. This is an interactive process that requires you to               tell me what you need and for us to work together to figure out the best communication style to get             you there.

          - The lab should feel like a safe place for you to speculate and discuss whatever you need to in order              to move your science forward. If people are behaving in a way that prevents this, please let me                      know. If you are behaving in a way that prevents this, please know that I will discuss it with you.

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Addressing each other: I will respond if you call me Peter or PJ, and if you call me Dr. Gaskill I will eventually realize you are talking to me. My preference is PJ, but I want you to be comfortable, so chose whatever works for you.

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           - This level of informality is not appropriate when addressing other faculty unless you already know                 them and they have told you how they want to be addressed. I recommend that you address                         faculty as Dr. X, and if you are not sure if they are have a doctorate, or what to call them, just call                     them Dr. and they will correct you if needed. You will never upset someone by being too formal,                     but it is easy to anger someone by not using their proper title.

           - I will generally call you by the name you prefer, so please let me know what that is. If your                              preferred name is an abbreviation (think Rach for Rachel or Steph for Stephanie), I would prefer to                  use your full name as that preserves a small amount of professional distance, which I feel is                            important for us to work together effectively. However, if this is an issue for you, I am happy.                            to accommodate and call you whatever you want. 

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Personal Meetings: Personal meetings, i.e. 1-on-1 with me occur on Mondays at a preset time. Meetings are for 45 minutes, and should be based around a powerpoint slide containing an outline of the meeting, your new data, experimental details and questions from the past week and upcoming weeks and slides with other questions on the. Lab members use the powerpoint to keep the meeting focused and on task, and make sure that the things that need to be addressed get answered within the meeting time. You do not need to meet with me every week, particularly if you have no new data or questions, just let me know ahead of time. If you are giving a lab meeting that week, you do not need to meet with me. 

 

Lab Meetings: Lab meetings are normally held weekly on Monday afternoons from 4 – 6 pm unless I am out or we have scheduled a separate event (data blitz, seminar, etc …) as the lab meeting for that week. Lab meetings occur on a set schedule and generally rotate through the lab trainees, but changes in the schedule are made to practice for talks/interviews/committee meetings/etc... Undergraduates and individuals working in the lab for less than 20 hours per week are exempt from lab meetings unless they ask to give one. 

              Your lab meeting should be a working meeting, meaning that you should display not only your most up-to-date data in a way that is accessible to other in the lab, but also highlight questions you have about interpretation of results, inclusions / exclusions of data or experiments, new ideas and other things you would like to have a group discussion about. You do not need to have a deep detailed background discussion at each meeting, only when we are doing formal meetings to introduce new lab members to a project.  Remember, the more effort you put into a meeting the more you will get back.

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Time spent in the lab: The first thing to remember about the time you spend working in the lab is that you are an adult, and I expect you to be responsible for your own time. That means I am not going to come and check to see that you are in the lab at set times during the day, nor am I going to give you a set schedule. I do expect that you behave professionally in terms of your time, that you give me advance notice when you are going to be out, when you will be taking vacation and that you let me know if you are going to deviate from your set schedule so I do not worry (i.e. if you are always in from 9 – 5, and no one has seen you by 1 pm, we are going to be worried and start to try to find you).

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• Everyone’s schedule and hours are going to be different depending on their position in the lab, their outside of lab schedule (classes, kids, partners, etc …), their responsibilities and their career position and focus in the lab. For instance, as the lab manager, Krisna has a set schedule of 9 am – 5 pm, because this enables her to interact effectively with the administrative staff and to be present during the times that the most people are in the lab. A post-doc might have a different schedule, and will likely work longer and less conventional hours, because their schedule is focused on their experiments and not on interactions with others. Similarly, a student might also keep irregular hours, as they work around classes in order to fit all of their lab work into a particular day. The most important thing about your schedule is that it fits your work-life balance.

 

Having said all of that, I do expect some things of you.

 

• First, I expect that you will work hard and efficiently while you are at lab, and will organize your time so you can get your work done effectively. This may mean different things depending on your project or your position – I would expect that post-doctoral fellows and senior graduate students will have many more long days than short ones (more weeks of 50 – 60 hours than 30 – 40), while technicians work a set number of hours per week. If time passes and you are not getting your work done, I will be sure to let you know and we will discuss how you might adjust your schedule and work habits to accommodate.

• Second, I expect that you will generally be here for a substantial amount of the day that I am here, so that we can interact. I generally work from 9 – 6:30, so as long as you are present for a few hours during that time so I can talk with you, that’s fine.

• Third, while I don’t mind if you need to work from home or the library, particularly when you writing a paper or your thesis, I expect that you will be present in the lab or the office, for a significant amount of your time. This is so that you can interact with other lab members, helping people or getting help on your experiments and analysis, or just chatting. This is extremely important to lab chemistry and morale.

• Fourth, I expect you to meet with me once per week, at a time we set, for about 30 - 45 minutes, to go over your progress for the week and your plans for the upcoming week. Please take meetings seriously, i.e. be prepared when you show up with a power point with your data and desired discussion points and let me know if you are going to be late or need to cancel.

• Fifth, I expect you to attend lab meetings, currently Wednesday afternoons from 4 pm – 6 pm, unless your class schedule prevents you from being present.

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My Expectations: My expectations of you will differ depending on where you are in your career and what you and I have discussed you getting out of your time in my lab. When you join the lab, and likely many times after that, you and I will discuss your expectations explicitly, talking about how we are progressing and what else we need to do to meet them.

          - Generally, I expect everyone to treat me and each other with respect, and to help to form a                             supportive lab environment – our lab is a safe space where everyone feels respected, and I expect               you to help keep it that way. I also expect you to be a good lab citizen. This means showing up for                 each other’s presentations, helping each other with editing, writing, presentation practice, keeping              the lab clean and orderly, paying attention to everyone’s work and not just your own. You do not                    have to be friends with anyone in the lab - although this often happens - but I do expect you to be                cordial and considerate in all your interactions. Finally, I expect you to come and talk with me about              any problems you are having in the lab, with your work, your time management, with me or with                    other people, so that we can resolve them as quickly as possible.