Choosing a lab

[Genomic Repairman]

Posted from my blog.

This post is in response to several emails that I have gotten lately. This decision is one of the biggest things you do in grad school, it basically primes your career and sets you up (hopefully) for a good postdoc position. So lets run through some factors when helping to determine a lab.

1. Size of the lab. Do you want to work in the megalab where you get no personal face time with the PI except for at lab meeting. You will likely be overseen by a postdoc or research scientist in the lab. This type of lab requires you to be able to work with limited supervisor and really be a self-starter. Medium size labs maybe have around 6-12 folks in them, so you get a little more face time with the boss but you are required to be independent. Small labs are usually around 6 and below. Hell you might even see the PI in the lab working with you. This could be due to personal choice of PI (maybe they are a micromanager), money issues, or a new lab. Folks that need a lot of hand-holding tend to gravitate to these labs as I have seen on numerous occasions.

2. Career stage of your PI. Do you want to get in on the ground floor with a new PI? Things may go slow but you gain immense knowledge on starting up a lab and are pretty much guaranteed a fair amount of personal attention. This can be a boon or bane based on your personal opinion but there is much to say about learning how to setup and trouble shoot equipment to get the lab off of the ground. Labs of mid-career PI's are what most of my grad student cadre fell into as did I, but I had the added benefit of helping get the lab off of the ground since my PI was recruited to the institution about the same time as I was. Older established PI's, these guys and girls are great for letters of rec and have the publications and grants to back up the swagger. They can probably get you placed into a great postdoc thanks to their clout and hopefully your hard work. Soon to retire/forgotten driftwood profs can be good if they have the money for you to finish up your project and are focused on mentoring and not the completion of that lakehouse that they are going to retire in. The driftwood folks are the worst, they are doing old science if any science at all, run a barebones research program if they are running one at all, and its probably just for vanity.

3. Money. I don't have much experience with NSF funding so I'll leave that for someone else to discuss and focus on NIH money. I work in a well funded lab, as my PI was recruited with tenure to my institution we have the beaucoup start up money, an R01, a P01, and an R01 application about to head out the door this summer. Money is a big thing, it determines the limitations of experiments that you can do. Remember everything from the thermocycler to FBS costs money and lots of it. Living hand to mouth is okay for the grad student stipend but not for the lab, and the PI's with limited funds tend to function like accordians expanding and contracting rapidly. Also look to make sure that your PI has consistent funding, you can search on the NIH Reporter. Now I know new PI's may not have lots of funds so this is mainly directed at folks looking for mid-career and later stage PI's.

4. Personality. Is your putative boss an ass? You need someone who will mentor you, not be your drinking buddy. You boss should have more interest in your work than your personal life, but they also should not be aloof to your personal situation. Make sure to ask current graduate students in their lab and more importantly grad students outside of their lab what the PI's reputation is. You are going to get worked like a rented mule regardless but its best to have a slavedriver who has a sunnier disposition when they crack the whip on your ass.

5. Techniques. Make sure you get into a lab that does some cool techniques and has the opportunities to learn others. I have other grad students that are envious of me because I am learning and doing a variety of techniques while some of them will little do nothing but genotype and run westerns until the day they graduate.

6. TTD. This is huge. Time to degree is a big thing. You don't want to be stuck in some lab for 8 years or more doing shit science left to toil while your other friends have moved on to postdoc positions. Find a PI who graduates good folks and fast. Now some labs have a slightly longer TTD but that may be because their students are doing harder projects. Remember folks innovation takes time, especially when you are producing antibodies and knockout mice. The latter is of course a royal pain in the tookus, and can yield nothing (i.e. the mice you spent nearly a year on have no discernable phenotype).

7. Facilities and Equipment. Do you want to spend the next 5 years pipeting with some beater pipets or be forced to share a tissue culture hood with 18 other folks. Hell no. Get a good look at the lab and what you have to work with.

8. Lab Personnel. Last but not least these will be the folks that you will be stuck in the trenches with for a long long damn time. You will interact with these folks in hospitable and sometimes not so hospitable situations. It is best that you get along with your lab mates and especially the lab manager. Do not run afoul of the lab manager, this person will be ordering your stuff, taking care of all the paperwork, and unlike a priest or lawyer is not obliged to keep confidential anything you say, especially if you occasionally bitch about the PI. Oh yeah, and don't piss off the postdocs, these folks are more knowledgeable and better trained than you, they turn out better science and much faster than a lowly grad student. They are not so far removed from being a graduate student and remember what is was like to be in your shoes. Having a good working relationship with these folks are key, they are immediately available sources of technical information, can teach you new and exotic techniques, and can give you guidance and mentoring while the PI is busy or away.

Hope this helps

[yinyangwriter]

Thank you for posting this! I would suggest that people also see what the working environment is like among the faculty...do they get along/share equipment collaboratively, etc.?

[Genomic Repairman]

One other corollary to add to this matter.

Where are folks going after they leave the lab. Good postdoc positions, industry, etc. You want a boss that can help to get you to places that you need to go, unless your prefer teaching intro biology at the community college. Also look at where their postdocs are headed off to as well. A fair number of them in TT positions, good sign. Most of them stuck in another postdoc, bad sign. Note, some of them may be doing another postdoc as this is a crap economy with not enough jobs to go around but if they are all doing second postdocs or languishing around the lab as an instructor for more than a year or two, not good.