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 the lab manager, Dr. Matt or myself. So remember

 

- 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.

- Never hesitate to ask what something is, how to handle it, or how to operate equipment and never be embarrassed to ask about how to use safely perform experiments or use equipment with which you are unfamiliar.

 

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Lab Safety

For all experiments, be sure to do the following 

- Wear lab coats, gloves, and safety goggles at all times the lab.

- Always wash your hands after an experiment or before leaving the wet lab. Never touch the door to the office with gloved or unwashed hands. 

      

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/

 

Biosafety (BioRaft) training must be completed before being allowed to touch any equipment or samples or perform any experiments in the lab. Once you are officially part of the lab (i.e. we have processed you administratively into Drexel and/or the department), either I or the lab manager will assign you training protocols from Bioraft to complete. You will receive an email that will enable you to access this training. 

 

Once you have finished your biosafety training is complete, you will train on the techniques you are going to use when you are doing research with a senior lab member who is familiar with those techniques. General lab protocol training will be done with the lab member you are shadowing or the lab manager.

 

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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 a senior lab member. Even if you are not working with HIV, there are some risks involved in working in our lab. as 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 in this handbook, 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.

 

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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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Lab Emergencies 

If there is a lab emergency and I am not here, email / slack / text / call me, Dr. Matt or the lab manager. If there is an emergency with departmental equipment, include Darin Ipe, the departmental operations manager, on the email. Our phone numbers are in the lab information folder. Emergencies include (but are not limited to):

• Anything that causes another lab member physical or mental damage

• 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.

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Lab Citizenship

Being a strong lab means working together to make sure both the research and the research environment are robust and enable you to be as effective as you can be. In general, you should treat others as you want to be treated and if you have issues with any situation or individual in the lab, please come talk with me about it. 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 to address and resolve it as rapidly as possible. 

 

This also means actively supporting each other, meaning that you should show up for each others presentations, help each other as you are able to with experiments, editing, writing, and presentation practice, work to keep the lab clean and orderly (see below) and pay attention to everyone's work - not just your own. You do not need to be friends with anyone in the lab, but I expect you to be professional (i.e. cordial and considerate) in your interactions. And I expect that if you have any problems with your work, with other lab members, with these expectations, with time management, or anything else that involves the lab, that you will come and speak honestly with me about them so I can help you resolve them as quickly as possible. 

 

These are the specific lab policies that all lab members are expected to support and follow to maintain the lab in proper working condition for everyone.

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1 - Clean-up after yourself. Your experiments are not finished until your work area and equipment is cleaned and prepared for the next person to use. For example, 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; if you use up all the pipettes in a tissue culture room it is your job to replace them once you finish. Clean-up should be considered part of your experiment and should be incorporated into your planning.

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2 - Carefully label and inventory your samples - this is a critical part of the experimental process. Once you have finished cleaning up your experiment, be sure to put all your newly generated samples away and log them into the appropriate inventory so you and others can easily find them in the future. 

 

3 - Make sure to do your monthly lab chores, and, if needed, 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, and if the lab manager reminds you about chores you have not done, remember that they are just trying to help you.

 

4 - 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.

 

5 - Consider lab resources carefully. Although the lab manager works hard to maintain resources for everyone, but 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.

 

Addressing others

I expect you to address the other lab members using their preferred pronouns, and that they will address you similarly. 

 

1 - 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.

 

2 - It is important to note that 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.

 

3 - 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.

 

 

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.

1 - 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.

 

2 - 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.

 

3 - When you speak to other people in the lab, department or in other professional fields address and explain things to them in the same way that you would like them to speak with and explain things to you.

 

 

Meetings

Personal meetings. 1-on-1 with Dr. Gaskill will occur on Mondays (or another chosen day if Mondays do not work) 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, as well as as any other questions you wish to address. Lab members should 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. We need to meet in person at least once every 3 weeks. If you are giving a lab meeting that week, you do not need to meet with me. Within two days of our meeting, you should send me an email summarizing our meeting so that I can make sure that you and I are on the same page regarding the discussion and so that we can clarify any questions about the ideas we had moving forward. 

 

Lab Meetings. Lab meetings are normally held weekly on Monday afternoon from 3 - 5 pm unless I am out (in which case we usually meet on Wednesday at the same time) or we have scheduled a separate event (data blitz, seminar, etc …) as the lab meeting for that week. If we have rotation, 1st or 2nd year students, lab meetings may be shifted to 4 - 6 pm to accommodate the class schedule. 

 

Lab meetings occur on a set schedule that is listed on the lab website. Meetings and generally rotate through  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 presenting at 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.

 

Time in the Lab

One of the primary professional skills I expect you to learn in the lab is time management, and I expect you to be responsible for your own time. This means you will need to understand and "own" your techniques and other practices so you can effectively understand how long it takes you to do things. It also means that 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 are missing a meeting or at-work lab activity and when you will be taking vacation - both so I and others who interact with you can plan our time effectively and 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).

 

Remember, 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, the lab manager has a set schedule because this enables them 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.

 

Below are more specific expectations regarding your time while you are in my lab.

 

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, unless we have worked out a specific deviation from this schedule, 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 9:30 – 7, so as long as you are present for a few hours during that time so I can talk with you, that’s fine.

 

Third, I don’t mind and will often encourage you to  work from home, a coffee shop or library, particularly when you writing a paper or your thesis, and I understand that brain work often happens more effectively when you are not physically in the lab space because it reduces distraction. However, I expect that you will be present in the lab or the office for a significant amount of your time each week unless we have discussed it. 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 regularly as discussed above, 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.