The members of our lab sit across 3 different sites, each a few minutes walk apart. Most of the team are sat on either the 5th or 3rd floors of the Dept of Experimental Psychology (EP) at 26 Bedford Way. A few people are based at the Department of Imaging Neuroscience at 12 Queen Square (also called “The FIL”), while others sit at the Max Planck Centre (MPC) for Computational Psychiatry in Russell Square House. Bedford Way has its own cafe and common room, and both EP, the FIL 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 has been a natural shift to more regular home working and/or hybrid meetings. We expect everyone to be on site on Tuesdays (for lab meetings) and Fridays (for FIL Project Presentations and Brain Meetings). On days when there are no lab meetings / Brain Meetings / project presentations, then working from home those days is an option - please keep an eye on the lab calendar and email announcements to plan your week. If there is a reason you need to dial in remotely for these meetings, please let Steve know in advance.
There is often tea and cake at the FIL after the Brain Meeting, which is a nice chance to socialise with other groups using neuroimaging. We will also often go for a lab drink at the Queens Larder around 5pm on a Friday.
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 pinned in the #lab-meetings channel on Slack for those dialing in remotely (though see “Hours” above for expectations that these are primarily in-person meetings).
Steve aims to have 1-to-1 meetings with all senior lab members (PhD students and postdocs) on a weekly basis, travel constraints permitting. Sarah will set these up taking into account availability. It is often useful if you can send any documents related to the meeting (slides with figures, drafts of writing, code, etc) the night before the meeting so that Steve can review in advance.
Outside of this, Steve’s door is always open and he is keen for people to drop by to chat.
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 usually held at 11am every Wednesday on Zoom.
Every Friday at 2pm the FIL 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.