Meetings and Expectations

The lab uses recurring meetings to coordinate projects, discuss recent work, and stay current with the literature. Members are expected to arrive prepared and to communicate in advance when they cannot attend.

Recurring Schedule

  • Whole-team meeting: Mondays at 1:00 PM in ND11.218.

  • Dean Lab meeting: Mondays at 3:00 PM in ND11.218.

  • Software development meeting: Fridays at 2:00 PM in ND11.124AA.

  • Department WIPs: Thursdays at 4:00 PM in the Faculty Club.

  • One-on-one meetings: typically held weekly on Monday in Kevin’s office (ND11.136D).

The whole-team meeting includes a broader group than the Dean Lab alone.

Whole-Team Meeting

Members are expected to participate in the Monday whole-team meeting. Lab members present their research in this venue on a recurring basis.

Dean Lab Meeting Format

The Monday Dean Lab meeting follows a two-week cycle:

  • Week 1: a polished research presentation followed by rapid fire

  • Week 2: journal club focused on the paper selected from the preceding rapid-fire pitches

Research Presentations

Research presentations are coherent scientific arguments and opportunities to improve the work through group discussion, not chronological progress reports. Failures, ambiguous results, and unfinished ideas are welcome when the reasoning is organized and communicated clearly.

Quick checklist

  • State the central question and why it matters.

  • Explain the approach and its rationale.

  • Organize results around scientific claims.

  • Separate evidence, inference, and uncertainty.

  • Conclude with confidence and remaining unknowns.

  • End with prioritized next steps and specific questions.

Motivation and question

Explain the motivation, significance, relevant unknown, and broader context. State the central question, hypothesis, or objective explicitly.

Approach and rationale

Explain the approach and why it is appropriate. Include material controls, replication, assumptions, and the evidence that would support or contradict the hypothesis.

Results and interpretation

Organize results around scientific claims rather than dates or workflow chronology. For each results segment, provide a clear question, relevant data, concise interpretation, and statement of confidence or uncertainty. Separate direct observations from inference and speculation, and address material alternative explanations, confounders, limitations, and negative or contradictory evidence.

Conclusions, decisions, and feedback

Make conclusions answer the original question without overclaiming. Summarize what was learned, confidence in the conclusion, and what remains unknown. Identify one to three prioritized next steps, explain why they have the highest value, and state the decision each will enable. End with a Questions for the group slide that requests specific feedback.

Presentation standard

Rehearse the presentation and keep it within the allotted time. Use legible figures and labels, consistent terminology and visual conventions, and enough context for the whole lab. Make material controls and replicate information visible. Conclusion-style slide titles are encouraged when they accurately summarize the evidence. Keep backup slides available for likely technical questions. Avoid unprocessed screenshots, unexplained color scales, unreadable plots, and protocol-level detail that does not affect interpretation.

Rapid Fire

Rapid fire is a scientific-triage and high-level communication exercise, not a compressed journal club. Each presenter synthesizes a recent paper into an elevator-pitch explanation of its claim, importance, evidence, and suitability for a full lab discussion.

Quick checklist

  • Use one slide and finish within two minutes.

  • State the problem and central claim.

  • Explain the approach at the level needed to understand the claim.

  • Identify the strongest evidence.

  • Explain why the paper matters.

  • Offer one independent critical judgment.

  • Recommend for or against journal club.

  • Show the citation, journal, and publication date.

Choosing a paper

Choose substantive primary research published online within the past year, preferably within the preceding three to six months. The paper should present a clear scientific or technical advance, be relevant to the lab or expose the lab to a valuable unfamiliar field, be accessible enough for a scientifically diverse audience to evaluate, and offer enough substance, uncertainty, or transferable insight for journal club. Select a reputable venue, but give scientific merit and discussion value priority over prestige, famous authors, or institutional reputation. A particularly timely preprint may be considered as a rare, explicitly identified exception, with its lack of peer review recognized during evaluation. Read the full paper rather than relying on its abstract or graphical abstract.

The two-minute pitch

Use no more than one slide, with one central figure or schematic at most and no animations. The strict speaking limit is two minutes, followed by no more than one minute of clarification. Explain or omit field-specific acronyms. Answer:

  1. What problem does the paper address?

  2. What is the central claim or advance?

  3. What did the authors actually do?

  4. What is the strongest supporting result?

  5. Why does the work matter?

  6. Why should or should not it become journal club?

Offer one independent high-level critical judgment, such as the paper’s greatest strength, most important uncertainty, least convincing claim, or potential to generate a valuable discussion. Do not read from the abstract, copy graphical-abstract language, narrate figures one by one, spend most of the pitch on methods, use unexplained jargon, or call a paper merely interesting or novel. The pitch should demonstrate independent synthesis.

Selecting the journal-club paper

Evaluate the importance of the question; the strength or controversy of the claims; the opportunity for critical discussion; relevance or transferable value to the lab; potential to teach the group something unfamiliar; and the accuracy and clarity of the pitch. Each person casts one vote, with reasoning available when it would make the intellectual basis for the choice clearer.

Journal Club

Journal club trains members to understand unfamiliar science efficiently, reconstruct an author’s logic, evaluate whether evidence supports the claims, identify assumptions and alternatives, design stronger experiments, and extract ideas relevant to the lab. It is not a polished narration of the paper.

Quick checklist

  • Explain why the paper and problem matter.

  • Identify two to four central claims.

  • Match each claim to its strongest evidence.

  • Evaluate the logic, controls, assumptions, and limitations.

  • Offer alternative explanations.

  • Propose the most informative missing experiment.

  • Distinguish what is established from what is suggested.

  • Translate the paper into lessons for the lab.

Context, claims, and experimental logic

Explain why the paper was selected, why the problem matters, and how the work is relevant to the lab. Summarize what was known, what remained unresolved, and the paper’s claimed conceptual or technical advance. Identify the paper’s two to four central claims before walking through individual figures. Explain the experimental or computational logic, why the authors chose the methods, and whether the design distinguishes competing explanations.

Claim-evidence analysis

Match each major claim to its strongest supporting evidence. Evaluate whether the evidence is direct or indirect, quantitative, adequately replicated, and supported by appropriate controls and statistics when those considerations materially affect the claim. Examine whether representative images agree with the corresponding quantification.

Creative and critical analysis

Distinguish material weaknesses from minor methodological preferences. Identify the strongest and weakest evidence, hidden assumptions, alternative explanations, and important limitations. Propose the single experiment that would most strengthen or falsify the central conclusion, and consider how the study could be improved with reasonable additional resources.

Conclusions and relevance to the lab

Distinguish what the paper convincingly establishes from what it merely suggests. Assess whether the title, abstract, and major claims are justified. End with the likely impact and what the Dean Lab should learn, adopt, test, or avoid, including unresolved questions.

Audience Expectations

All attendees should arrive prepared and participate actively. Listen for the central question, logic, evidence, and uncertainty; ask clarifying questions before moving into criticism; distinguish conceptual concerns from technical problems; offer concise, actionable suggestions; avoid dominating the discussion; and challenge claims and interpretations without attacking the presenter. For journal club, everyone must read the selected paper in full and bring at least two substantive questions or observations. During rapid fire, the audience evaluates the paper’s importance, evidence, discussion potential, and the clarity and accuracy of the pitch, with reasoning available for its journal-club vote.

Presenters must demonstrate ownership of the scientific reasoning, not merely show work or summarize literature. Work may be unresolved; the thinking and presentation should not be disorganized.

One-on-One Meetings

Bring one or two slides that make it easy to discuss:

  • short-term and long-term goals

  • data, analysis, interpretation, and next steps

  • obstacles, delays, and frustrations that are affecting progress

If a figure is intended to mature into a manuscript panel, prepare it using the standards on Figure Preparation before circulation.

General Expectations

  • Be punctual so meetings can start and end on time.

  • If you cannot attend, notify the PI in advance when possible.

  • Come prepared for the meeting format you are scheduled to participate in.