I expect you to:

• Do work you’re proud of, and seek the respect of those who you respect.
• Give yourself time to think and try not to be busy just to seem busy. Amos Tversky tells us that “The secret of doing good research is always to be a little underemployed”.
• Be careful and don’t rush. Double and triple check your work, and try to incorporate sanity checks in your analyses.
• Be organized, document everything and take notes. Your future self will thank you.
• When we meet, take notes and especially write down any specific action points we’ve agreed on. Not only does this help structure your work, it can also serve as a great reminder for when I inevitably contradict my past self.
• Show interest in and learn about your lab colleagues’ work and share your ideas and skills in return. This can be done informally, such as stopping by someone’s desk and asking them what they are up to.
• Engage fully in research. Our lab is proud of being passionate about science and I expect everyone to work hard and take an active part in the life of the lab.
• Attend lab meetings. I expect everyone to attend as many lab meetings as they can, while recognising there are occasions where that won’t be possible.
• Attend WCHN Project Presentations on Friday afternoons.
• Attend seminars within our home departments. I expect everyone to attend at a minimum the WCHN Brain Meeting (Friday pm) and our Consciousness Club seminars (occasional Wednesdays). Beyond this I encourage you to attend the EP seminars (Mondays), the MPC Computational Psychiatry talks (Thursdays) and ICN seminars (Mondays), though recognise that it’s not usually possible or wise to spend your whole week listening to talks!
• Regularly check Slack and respond to messages during work hours - this is our primary means of communication within the group and it’s important that we keep checking in and supporting each other.

Beyond these baseline expectations, I’m always delighted to hear about new data, new results, new papers, new talks, or anything else you’re excited about - put it in Slack or pop into my office for a chat. Outside of scheduled meetings, my door is always open.

I do not expect you to:

• Respond immediately to emails, especially if sent at unusual times. Email is an asynchronous medium, so set your own boundaries (and other fantastic PhD tips)!
• Work over weekends and holidays. There are rare exceptions where we are facing a deadline for a conference, talk, or paper revision, but even then you should feel free to say no.

Steve aspires and promises to:

• Provide the best scientific advice he can.
• Support you in your research and career and help you flourish as a scientist and person.
• Respond to questions and give feedback in a timely manner.
  • I aim to respond to emails or Slack messages the same or next day. If something is urgent (e.g. a problem with data collection, a sudden deadline for a grant application) I will respond as quickly as possible.
  • I aim to meet with everyone in the lab weekly or biweekly. At other times in the week feel free to drop a Slack message for a quick query. On Mondays I might not reply for a while as this is the day I keep free for my own coding and writing projects.
• Create a fun and supportive learning environment.
• Help you form connections with other researchers and write recommendation letters for scholarships, awards, or future positions.

Things to bear in mind / areas where Steve sometimes struggles!

• Papers require more time because they need extended blocks of time in the day to think and write. The aim is to get papers back to you within 2 weeks, but often I procrastinate and gfet derailed by other tasks. Please do chase as occasionally things get waylaid.
• When preparing for individual meetings, I find it very useful to have a (very brief) reminder at the start of the meeting about the goals and aims of your project, and the current stage that you are up to. There are several projects in the lab, and it is hard to keep all of these in working memory. It can also be useful for both of us to have the chance to “zoom out” and see the big picture once in a while. A useful way of preparing for meetings is to plan to present new results or analyses as part of the slide deck, so we have something concrete to review. But a meeting can also take other forms - you might instead to prefer to talk about but also how you are doing personally, frustrations with code or analyses, or broader career or PhD-related concerns.
• If you need a letter of reference, or other more substantial feedback (eg on a grant application), please give a heads-up a few weeks in advance (e.g. as soon as you know that you’re applying for something). Steve can then block off time to go over your work and give feedback quickly.