General Manual — Document 01
Lab Mission and Identity
Who we are, what we are trying to accomplish, and what it means to be part of this lab.
01 The Lab
This is, first and foremost, a training lab. The goal is to allow people at every level of training to be themselves, to leverage their unique strengths, and to contribute to the larger scientific mission while growing as scientists, artists, and engineers.
The lab draws together trainees from computational, engineering, and biological backgrounds. No branch outweighs the others: each is equally important. Over time, working closely together, members build a common language: one that emerges from years of exchanging ideas, vocabulary, and insight across disciplines. Finding the places where words are used differently, or where the same concept is understood through entirely different frameworks, is part of how the lab gains clarity on difficult problems.
This is a laboratory in the fullest sense: a place of learning, making, and inquiry. People here are expected to bring themselves to their work, and to value what others bring in return.
02 The Mission
The lab is a research lab at its core. It prioritizes clear, thoughtful, curiosity-driven investigation. The work is broadly focused on tissue biology and the principles of system-scale organization and change: how tissues are built, how they fail, how they might be restored.
This work requires interdisciplinary synthesis. The lab will frequently pull techniques from biological, physical, computational, and mathematical directions in order to gain new clarity on old problems. No single framework is sufficient. The willingness to move across disciplinary boundaries, and to do so with care and rigor, is one of the lab's defining features.
03 Values
The following values describe how the lab actually operates, not how it aspires to operate. They are named here so that new members understand what is expected, and so that everyone has language for holding the lab accountable to its own standards.
This should be a place where people feel comfortable being themselves, flexing their minds and hands in interesting ways, and being valued for who they are and what they bring.
Of one another, of ourselves, and of the people and communities whose biology we study and whose work we build upon.
Strive to produce work that others can rely on. This applies to data, to code, to writing, and to the commitments you make to your colleagues.
Build beautiful tools, rigorous engineering, and deeply understood explanations of problems. Surface-level answers are rarely sufficient here.
The lab seeks to do good in the world, and by each other. This is not a soft value. It shapes how we give feedback, how we share credit, and how we treat people when things are hard.
04 Learning More
If you are deciding whether to join the lab, the best thing you can do is talk to current and former lab members directly. Ask them what it is like to work here. The lab is confident enough in its culture to make that recommendation without qualification.
Once you are a member, the rest of this manual covers expectations, norms, and practices in detail. The documents below are good places to start:
Computational members should also familiarize themselves with the Computational Lab Manual, which covers coding standards, data practices, and computational workflows in detail. Wet lab members should consult the Wet Lab Manual for protocols, safety procedures, and bench expectations specific to that work.