The members of our lab sit across 3 different sites, each a few minutes walk apart. Some of the team are sat at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, at 12 Queen Square (also called “The FIL”), while others are based on the 5th floor of the Dept of Experimental Psychology (EP) at 26 Bedford Way (also called the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience) or the Max Planck Centre (MPC) for Computational Psychiatry in Russell Square House. Bedford Way has its own cafe and common room, and both EP and the MPC hold regular seminars of interest to our group.
Being around the lab builds camaraderie, ensures we’re always learning from and helping each other, and sparks ideas that you usually wouldn’t have by staying home. However a benefit of academia is that the hours and potential for remote working is much more flexible than a regular office job. This is especially true post-Covid when there is likely to be a natural shift to more regular home working and/or hybrid meetings. At the time of writing (August 2021), this is still being worked out, not just within UCL and our lab, but for companies and businesses everywhere. For now, Steve is happy to let people take their own approach to balancing work location (either home or in the lab). We’ll keep this situation under review, and when meetings (such as Friday seminars, etc) start to resume regularly in person, it is likely that Steve will expect everyone to be in the lab at least 1-2 key days per week.
On “work” days (i.e. days when you are not on annual leave (A/L)) everyone is expected to keep in touch with the lab Slack. Slack is our primary medium for all research-related communication. When writing messages to Steve, consider whether others might benefit from the conversation too and post in the relevant open channel (such as #code-tips or #stats).
Our lab meetings are usually on a Tuesday at 1030am, and held in the seminar room at the Max Planck Centre, 2nd floor of 10-11 Russell Square House. These meetings are hybrid and a Zoom link is posted in the #lab-meetings channel on Slack for those dialing in remotely.
The MetaLab runs the Consciousness Club meetings where guest speakers from a range of disciplines come to discuss all things consciousness- and metacognition-related. These meetings are held at 11am every Wednesday on Zoom.
Every Friday at 2pm the WCHN holds “Project Presentations” - presentations of future projects that will use Centre resources. This is a great opportunity to see what other groups are planning, and to learn about issues affecting both experimental design and neuroimaging data acquisition and analysis. Immediately after Project Presentations at 315pm there is the “Brain Meeting” seminar, with a mix of both internal and external spakers. These are valuable meetings and all MetaLab members are expected to attend each week during term time. These can take up most of Friday afternoon so plan accordingly!
Let Steve know if you want to attend a conference, apply for a (travel) grant, or give a talk - the answer is often yes, but it’s good to discuss well in advance, particularly if funding is needed. Steve will make sure that his travel schedule is in the lab calendar, so that you will know when he is around to meet.
We encourage everyone to take holidays and breaks away from the lab. When you do go away, try to switch off your email – set an out of office message and remove it from your phone. Take a proper break. To ensure you log your Annual Leave, ensure you ask Steve to sign off the relevant dates, and add it to the lab calendar so we know who is around and who is away.