Lab Meetings at PennLINC

Weekly lab meetings occur every Tuesday from 3:30-4:30PM, with exceptions for holiday and travel schedule.

The current lab meeting schedule can be found pinned to the #pennlinc_general channel on slack. Slides from past lab meetings can be found in this repository; please remember to post your slides there following a lab meeting presentation.

All members of the image analysis team (regardless of faculty mentor) are welcome to attend, but trainees at PennLINC are expected to attend– and let Ted know directly if you cannot attend; also please make every effort to be promptly on time. Clinical research coordinators are encouraged to attend as well, excepting conflicts with participant visits. Note that if you sign up for a slot on the schedule please mark it in your calendar clearly– we definitely want to avoid last second schedule conflicts / content vacancies.

Lab meeting is a flexible format; several common “flavors” are below. It is critical when leading a lab meeting to specify what the “goal” of the lab meeting is.

Work in progress

This is the most common lab meeting format: a lab member presents their current project in a typical scientific format, with a focus on explaining new methods, exciting results, and current obstacles. These presentations should be geared to be accessible and interesting to lab members of all skill levels. This is not a “super-glossy” format; it is rather an informal format where questions, discussion, and interruptions are highly encouraged. As such, it is a good idea to structure the presentation in a way that encourages discussion, especially around key issues.

Informatics and pipeline updates

These occur 1-2 times a semester, and typically are focused on new initiatives regarding neuroinformatics initiatives, including data resources, analysis pipelines, reproducability efforts, and open-science initiatives.

Journal club

This occurs on an irregular schedule, and usually focuses on an important article that may guide new projects or a change in practice. In general, each lab member should expect to lead journal club 1x/ year. A slide deck describing the article, displaying major results, and key questions is suggested. All lab members are expected to read the article prior to journal club.

Topic review

This is like a more ambitious version of a journal club. Instead of focusing on a single paper, a lab member will present a series of studies on a topic of interest.

Tool review

This is an interactive format where a lab member introduces – and ideally demos!! – a new tool that may be of broad interest to the lab. Another version is a “Tool Blitz” where multiple tools are quickly reviewed, usually by different lab members.

Quarterly update

This is a format to allow everyone in the lab to keep track of ongoing projects, and encourage collaboration. It occurs 1x a quarter. This is an opportunity for us all to stay on the same page regarding what projects are going on in the lab. Each lab member has about ~3 minutes to present a single slide describing what they have been most focused on in the past month. If you are managing several projects, choose one to focus on (but it is ok to allude briefly to the others). Given the fact that there always are a wide range of experience levels in the lab, it should be emphasized that the most important goal of this update is that it is accessible, and folks can grasp “the big picture”.

The quarterly update may be more likely to be accessible if the following elements are covered.

  1. Study hypothesis: What is the over-arching hypothesis of the research? If currently at an early study phase, would use grant aims that are most applicable to the current phase.

  2. Dataset: including study (PNC, reward, ABCD, HBN, etc), modality (t1, DTI, etc), and data type (cortical thickness, FA, etc).

  3. Study stage: Be explicit about where you are in a project. Stages of a project are outlined in the Stages of a Project Wiki.

  4. Current progress: This should be the meat of the update. Place current work in the context of study phase and hypotheses. Emphasize progress, but also challenges / obstacles so we can rapidly problem solve as a group. Again, focus on making the challenges and results accessible to lab members of all backgrounds.

  5. Reproducibility: Who is your “buddy” for this project, and how will reproducibility be ensured? Be explicit regarding where you are in terms of project reproducibility checkpoints outlined in the Reproducibility Guide.

Cross-group meetings

On an approximately quarterly basis, we have a joint lab meeting with our friends and colleagues in our section, including the labs of Aaron Alexander-Bloch, Erica Baller, Ruben Gur, David Roalf, Sheila Shanmugan, Cobb Scott, and Dan Wolf. These are marked as “cross-group meeting” in the lab calendar and occur approx quarterly – please check the spreadsheet for date and time.