Lab Policies

Welcome to the Chandler lab! We are excited to have you here. Please read through the below lab policies and tips to help get oriented. (much content from this site was borrowed with permission from Prachee Avasthi at KUMC )

Career Development

We will encourage you to take advantage of the many opportunities available to develop as a scientist and a researcher. These include designing and conducting experiments, interpreting data, writing grants, writing review articles, presenting posters and speaking at conferences, participating in training courses, going to career development seminars, mentoring less experienced trainees etc. Please take advantage of these opportunities so you can have the very best chance to achieve your scientific and career goals when you leave (because, in academics, most of you will leave). To help identify your career goals, please complete an Individualized Development Plan.

Scientific Integrity

Important: Never manipulate or selectively exclude/expand data to achieve an expected or desired result. This is falsification and ignorance is not an excuse. Never use text or content from elsewhere in your writing without citing it appropriately (even if it’s something you previously wrote, which is called self-plagiarism).

Lab Safety

Important: Our lab is a Biosafety Level 2 laboratory. This means we work with bacteria that could be pathogenic to people in certain contexts. We need to be safe for our own good, the good of our community, and to satisfy state and federal regulations. As per CDC guidelines, this means:

  • Access to our lab is restricted. Get a key from Josie, return the key when you leave.
  • Appropriate clothing and personal protective equipment is worn in the lab (lab coats, long pants, closed-toe shoes, goggles, and gloves).
  • Biosafety cabinets are used when needed.
  • Research materials are appropriately decontaminated
  • (bleach/autoclave).

KU Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) works with us to be sure we are performing research safely and up to state and federal standards. All new personnel are required to take KU EHS Biosafety courses, which can be found on Blackboard. To access the courses, you must first self enroll – please see Josie for instructions and the password. Then, find the list of required and recommended courses specific to our lab. Please save the certificate upon completion and upload to our lab’s Google Drive.

Lab Notebook and Data Backup

Keeping a good lab notebook is an art and an essential part of research; you will no doubt improve this process as you progress in the lab, however, please make every effort to keep your notebook tidy, legible, sufficiently detailed, and organized so that you and others can access the data you have generated later (very helpful for presentations, publications and troubleshooting experiments). Check in with Josie and/or your lab mentor about how you are using your lab notebook, especially when you first get started. Also, please go through the slides from the NIH on how to keep a lab notebook.

Your lab notebook belongs to the University, and should be kept in the lab. All your raw data should also be stored in the Chandler lab in your lab notebook or on the Chandler lab computers or our ResFS drive. If you also have additional scratch notes, please transfer relevant data to your notebook in a readable/digestible format. Please make sure your notebook is up to date by the end of every week if not sooner. Please transfer all your raw data/images to a second source (personal computer, jump/hard drive, cloud server) every week as well so it can be backed up. Notebooks can be in written journal form or electronic.

Lab Meetings

We have several types of lab meetings. We do not do all of these in any given semester. These meetings are mandatory unless we’ve discussed in advance otherwise.

  • Lab Meeting: One person presents a detailed update on their work including background, data, interpretations, and future directions. These might happen for each person approximately every 3-4 months.
  • Journal Club: One person presents a paper of their choice or one of outstanding interest to the entire lab. Typically, the presenter will merely show each of the figures in a PowerPoint presentation and all members of the lab are prepared to present any of the figures and discuss the paper.
  • Individual Meetings: This is your protected time with Josie to discuss data and anything else of concern. Meetings are ~30 minutes long and the frequency depends on your needs and availability, but are generally every week. Please check out this post to be prepared for your meeting.
  • Non-regular meetings: Come by Josie’s office, text or email to set up a meeting any time if you need to talk for any reason.
  • SQuEE (Evolution and Ecology of Quorum Sensing meeting): This is a once per month meeting of our lab with labs from K-state, UW and MSU over Zoom. Someone from one of the labs presents either data or a practice talk.
  • Departmental Seminars: These are on Monday afternoons during the Spring and Fall and are required by the MB PhD program for all grad students. If you are not a grad student, seminars are recommended particularly for speakers invited by Josie.
  • CAMP: These are on Fridays at 3 pm during the Spring and Fall and are required by the MB PhD program for all grad students. Our grad students are also required to present once per year. If you are not a grad student, CAMP presentations are recommended when speakers are from the microbiology group or our lab.

Lab Harmony

Please be considerate of your fellow lab mates. Some ways to do this are:

  • Keep your own stash of reagents and supplies on your bench and don’t take those things from someone else without their permission.
  • When you use the last of something that is shared, mark it down for ordering or replacement or replace it yourself.
  • Keep your mess to your bench rather than leaving spare items or garbage around the lab.
  • Be an open communicator about using shared equipment such as thermocyclers, gel chambers, microscopes, etc and be willing to compromise.
  • Be respectful of everyone in the lab regardless of their stage of training. We all rely on each other to make the lab a success and everyone plays an important role in this process.

Lab Jobs

Everyone contributes to making the lab run. While we typically have an undergraduate ‘dishwasher’ for many of the housekeeping jobs, this isn’t always the case or doesn’t always cover everything, and some tasks need to be carried out by grad students (such as ordering supplies). If you are assigned a job or see that a job needs doing, please take this seriously and take care of your duties on a regular basis. It’s likely the entire lab is counting on you/waiting on you. We will regularly check in about lab duties and change policies if needed.

Help and Feedback

In the Chandler lab, we function as a team. We foster an environment of learning and helping, so that we can all be as productive as possible. However, please take responsibility for your own experiments and project. Taking responsibility is the first step (and essential!) towards becoming a great researcher and having a successful career. If you need help, your first instinct should be to think through what you know and what you can find out on your own. Check Google, our lab protocols, ResearchGate and the literature for any helpful information. Next, seek help from more experienced lab mates, classmates, and Josie. When writing a grant/ manuscript/abstract/poster or preparing a presentation, please utilize your peers and even the most junior members of the lab for feedback (if you can’t make a junior member understand it, it’s probably not good enough for a broad audience). Also, ALWAYS check with Josie before submitting anything – our rule is that all authors (including Josie) must okay it before submission. Feedback is an important part of the development of any research project. It takes time to provide feedback, so the more feedback you get the more lucky you are – this means your peers and mentors are investing in you! In fact, learning how to seek and interpret feedback is also an important part of your development as a researcher and scientist. For this reason, aim to finish all written projects several weeks in advance of the deadline to allow enough time for feedback and revision.

Work Schedules

Your progress is measured by your productivity and not by the time spent in the lab. That said, it is essential to spend sufficient time (and at the right time) to accomplish your research. Please be around at least during core hours (roughly 11 am to 3 pm), so you can connect regularly with your peers and be present for meetings. A good rule of thumb is to plan to spend at least as much time in the lab or in the lab + teaching/classes as you would if you had a regular full-time job (40 hr/wk with ~3 weeks of sick/vacation time per yr). As you would for a regular job, notify Josie and your direct lab mentor (if applicable) if you are sick, going on vacation, or otherwise away from the lab for more than a day. Give as much notice as you can, especially if someone is relying on you (i.e. if your mentor had to rearrange their day to accommodate your experiment). It is important to remember that hard work is required to be competitive for whatever you choose for your future career, but it is also important to keep a consistent balance for your health and sanity. As has been said many times already, it is a marathon and not a sprint.

Presenting and Publishing

It is important to present and/or publish your research at regular increments. This serves as a step in your scientific training and creates a tangible product of your results. This is a process that will involve multiple iterations and lots of feedback from Josie and from other members of the lab and scientific community. Please see the section on feedback (above).

For putting together your first poster, talk or paper, we recommend starting with a template (someone else’s that is similar). Ask your peers or Josie for an example that is relevant to your project and begin there. We will also keep examples on the lab drive. We also recommend drawing out a draft form of posters, slides or figures by hand before designing them in Power Point or Prism/Adobe Illustrator – this is a good stage for a round of feedback! Ask either Josie or your research mentor for some feedback at regular stages during the process.

Some useful resources related to scientific communication can be found in our Resources page.