Lab Members Research Articles

Leading the people and leading the work: Practical considerations for ethical research.

Scientific work is demanding and complex, requiring those leading research to be simultaneously innovative and ethical in their work. Along with this, those leading scientific teams need to be able to influence both the work being done and lab members doing the work. Thus, both leadership and management skills are necessary to navigating the organizational, social, and ethical components of the research process in order to do rigorous, ethical, and high-quality scientific work. This paper recommends a number of practices that leaders of research teams should engage in, including management behaviors for "leading the work" and leadership behaviors for "leading the people" that foster excellence and integrity in research labs. Researchers can take an intentional approach to leadership and management to create a robust environment for ethical research. Overall, a researcher's routine behaviors as leaders of their labs should establish a healthy work environment and promote effective interpersonal interactions among lab members. Further, the lab requires routine procedures and structure to provide adequate oversight of the research. This paper also addresses challenges that may arise when implementing leadership and management practices, along with strategies for overcoming these strategies. Avenues for future research and policy development related to leadership and management in scientific contexts are discussed.

UFSC Integration to The Academic Society Journal

In this edition, we are pleased to present the last advances of The Academic Society Journal in terms of relevance and diffusion. Due to our continuous effort for improvement, we now have ISSN, DOI in publications, a peer review policy and editorial board of renowned professionals. In this context, our editorial board is integrating professor Daniel Martins, who is coordinator of the Robotics Laboratory (LAR) at UFSC. In addition to him, other LAR members were invited to join the team of reviewers. The UFSC – IFSP partnership started at 2014, with the approval of CAPES Public Call in Assistive Technology in Brazil and Studies on Disability (PGPTA) No.59/2014 with the project “Reconfigurable Platform for Assistive Technology for Bedridden Patients”. The funds from this project helped to finance scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students from both universities involved. From that moment, UFSC has been participating annually in the MEC3F Congress of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the three Borders, an event that undoubtedly promoted the exchange between these universities. This event is deeply connected with our Society and TAS Journal. During the 6th International Symposium on Multibody Systems and Mechatronics MuSMe 2017, organized by the Commission for Mechatronics and Technical Committees for Multibody Dynamics, Robotics and Mechatronics in UFSC, in Florianópolis, it became evident the importance of creating research centers of excellence in Latin America to increase our international competitiveness, a fact that we can evidence now with the recent participation of Prof. Silvina Ramos group. In September 2018, the 4th WMRD - Fourth Workshop on Mechanism and Robot Design, of Federal University of Santa Catarina UFSC was gathered in Blumenau and the participants had the opportunity to discuss new forms of scientific cooperation between the institutions. Today, we have completed our partnership with the participation of professors and students from the Robotics Laboratory – LAR from UFSC. We hope our work and partnership will allow us to further elevate the concept of the TASJ journal, generating a greater impact factor, number of publications and will support scientific and technological knowledge. Interestingly, what started with assistive technology and accessibility projects can then increase accessibility to scientific publication, open access and free of charges.

Choose your adviser wisely.

The clock read 11 p.m. and I was still in the lab, staring at my poster abstract for what felt like the millionth time. I couldn't focus. But going home wasn't an option. My adviser had required me, and the rest of my labmates, to stay in the lab until she had time to read all of our abstracts. The submission deadline wasn't for a few days, but she had decided she wanted to meet early with each of us to discuss the single-paragraph descriptions of our work. We waited dutifully as each lab member took their turn. None of us dared to leave—or to challenge our boss. I didn't get home until 1:30 a.m. > “The last thing you want is an adviser who brings you down.” It was one more reminder that I should have been more careful when selecting a graduate adviser. Unfortunately, I was foolish enough not to give mentoring style a second thought. I was simply happy to have received an offer. Part of the problem was that I had limited options. I had moved to the United States with my husband, who had a good job in a particular city. It had only one university, with only one department that really interested me. So I started to volunteer in a research lab there. I was a regular attendee at departmental seminars, and that's where I met my future adviser. After she presented a seminar, I approached her and we set up a time to chat. We had a productive discussion about her research. Later, I went to dinner with her lab group. I didn't pick up any signs of trouble, although one person who worked in a lab that shared space with hers did tell me about coming across one of her lab members crying in the breakroom. Naively, I ignored that warning sign. Within a few weeks, the faculty member offered me a position in her lab as a master's student. The opportunity seemed too good to pass up. I hoped it would work out. It wasn't long before reality set in. Group meetings were dreadful. Our adviser was often angry and verbally abusive. She persistently micromanaged her lab members and pitted us against one another. Once, she sent an irate email on a federal holiday, asking us why we weren't working. “The only lab that is empty is ours,” she wrote. “How is this possible? Don't you have experiments or data to analyze?” The situation wore me down, and I lost motivation to do my work. I wondered whether I should quit, but as an international student, I felt trapped. If I dropped out of my program, I'd not only be out of a job, but I'd also lose my student visa status. So I stuck it out and waited for the right moment to jump ship. I applied to upgrade from the master's program to the Ph.D. program. That option wasn't available until I'd completed 1 year of graduate school, but it ultimately gave me a ticket out of her lab. As I looked for a new adviser, I was careful not to repeat the mistakes I had made in the past. I approached another faculty member whose research interested me. But when I visited his lab, I paid attention to how he interacted with others, and I spoke with people who worked with him, specifically asking about his mentoring style. I was amazed how friendly everyone was. His students had great regard for him, and I immediately sensed that his lab was an environment where I could thrive. He took me on as a Ph.D. student, rescuing me from the misery I'd felt in graduate school up to that point. In my new lab, I arrived eager to work each day, and I didn't go home mentally exhausted by interpersonal disputes. That helped me be much more determined and efficient with my work. Grad school is a tough, long road that requires patience and perseverance. Finding a lab that is a good match for you is critical. I encourage prospective students to learn from my mistakes and to do your due diligence before joining a lab. Ask a lot of questions and seek a lot of diverse opinions—because the last thing you want is an adviser who brings you down.

Together for Hope and Resilience: A Humanistic Experience by the Vulnerability, Trauma, Resilience and Culture Lab Members during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought stress and anxiety to students, professors, and staff in universities. The effectiveness of members of research laboratories not directly involved in research on the virus may be impacted. At the University of Ottawa, laboratories have been affected by the shutdown of all non-essential activities. An experience in a research laboratory at the University of Ottawa observed that members were affected by anxiety, stress, sleep deregulation, etc. However, a humanistic approach that allowed members to share their COVID-19 experiences in an authentic, empathic atmosphere leads them to regain their effectiveness, create hope, and develop resilience strategies.

Scientific Editing in the COVID‐19 Era—Personal Vignettes from the JBMR Editors

Scientific Editing in the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 Era—Personal Vignettes from the <scp><i>JBMR</i></scp> Editors

Researchers embrace fashion to show off science concepts

When fashion designers, retailers, and families attend Vancouver Kids Fashion Week, they expect to see models donning the latest in children’s fashion. But at an event last October, attendees saw scientists as well. Researchers from Michael Kobor’s lab at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, had set up a booth to showcase some of the model organisms they study. The fashion twist: Those model organisms later appeared on the runway, on a line of outfits created by fashion designers. Mechanical engineer Angela Chang and designer Harry Umen came together to create the “Luminous Firefly Dress,” aiming to evoke ideas about how body gesture, light, color, and sound enhance personal expression. Image credit: Howard Eglowstein (photographer). The collaboration between the Kobor lab and the fashion school at Vancouver Community College in British Columbia, Canada, started several months earlier. The researchers were desperate for ways to share their work with a new audience. Some lab members work on human genetics and epidemiology; others on basic research using animal models. The intricacies of the latter research, they found, weren’t easy to share with the general public. “The model organism research is just as important, but not as visible,” says graduate student Samantha Schaffner, who studies the epigenetics of Parkinson’s disease. Schaffner and her colleagues started brainstorming ways to introduce these model organisms to a wider audience and quickly landed on the idea of a collaboration with a group outside of science. Initially, Schaffner and her team considered a wide range of art collaborators, from illustrators to jewelry designers. But Schaffner remembered another creative field from her childhood: Her mother managed a children’s clothing line, working with fashion designers to create hats called “Sam’s Tams.” Imagining the possibilities of colorful and eye-catching model organism-themed fashion, Schaffner suggested the lab contact the fashion …

Chemistry departments deal with coronavirus closures

Until March 11, it was business as usual in the University of Rochester’s Chemistry Department. But now chair Todd Krauss is juggling the sudden adoption of online-only classes and the restriction of campus to essential personnel to avoid COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. For now, professors and grad students can come on campus, Krauss says. But with the coronavirus spreading in the local community, he thinks it’s just a matter of time before labs are closed down. Across the world, universities are learning to deal with what is now a new normal: closed campuses, homebound colleagues, and online teaching. Krauss is pushing his department’s faculty and students to employ social-distancing measures, such as putting labs on staggered shifts so people can spread out, letting lab members work from home, and conducting meetings remotely. He’s hoping researchers can collect as much data as possible now so they can

Thinly sliced

A collaboration of US and Swedish researchers presents, for the first time, radio frequency (RF) reliability studies of fully integrated complimentary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs), important for designing next generation wireless communication applications, especially those that are based on ultra-thin flexible packages. Mitra et al. have a wide spread of research areas, including such topics as communications radar, hand-held medical scanners and portable weapon scanning technology. It is, however, their research into CMOS RFICs that lead to the present paper. Mastery of CMOS technology, with its small chip size, is thought to be crucial for the continued miniaturisation of circuits, with the world of nanoelectronics providing a potential gateway to the next generation of highly integrated multifunctional devices, circuits and systems. The Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Lab members at North Dakota State University. (From Left) Arka Biswas, Chitralekha Biswas, Dipankar Mitra (in the back), and Babak Hamidi. RFIC Characterisation Set-up at NDSU. The ‘thinning-down’ of integrated circuits is one step towards mastering CMOS technology, with thinner and more lightweight circuitry providing more efficient and cost-effective solutions for various applications, including wireless communications, wearable and flexible electronics and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. One of the biggest challenges for realisation of flexible and ultra-thin ICs is the effect die-substrate thinning has on the RF performance of the IC. It was this problem that triggered Mitra et al. into producing the RF reliability studies presented in Electronics Letters. Thinning of the die-substrate, the small block of semiconducting material upon which a circuit is built, is one of the main contributors to performance degradation for RFICs, whilst also being the most important for producing thinner and more flexible circuitry. In their work, Mitra et al. use a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) to measure the effects of die-substrate thickness on the RF performance of the IC, including frequency range, RF output power variation, phase noise variation and DC parameters. The usual thickness of die-substrate for CMOS circuits as between 250–300 micrometres. Mitra et al. used a 250 µm thickness VCO as a test case, and then thinned down the die-substrate to 50 µm, 35 µm and 25 µm. They found that deviations of frequency and output power are within 1% and 1 dB respectively, with DC parameters also shown to be fairly similar for the different substrate thicknesses. The sensitivity to phase noise when thinning down was found to be significant, which confirms the well-known fact that phase noise sensitivity increases due to leakage. Flexible electronics is changing the way we make and use electronics. Many existing applications, such as wireless communication, wearable electronics, and healthcare monitoring require flexibility to promote more efficient and cost-effective solutions. Development of these flexible electronics is driving progress in the field, which enables futuristic applications such as a network of IoT devices and connected, smart cities. Several initiatives from governments and industry have also contributed to the progress and it is now estimated that the market for flexible electronics will reach $300 billion by 2028, with expected growth from $29 billion in 2017 to over $63 billion in 2023 for printed, flexible and organic electronics alone. The high-performance of CMOS electronics will be critical to this growth in flexible electronics, as a great number of current and future electronics rely on the fast communication and computation they can provide.

Why it’s important to give and invite feedback

You’ve mentioned on Twitter that you solicit anonymous feedback from your lab group, and your lab members also provide peer-to-peer feedback. Why do you think it’s important to engage in this kind ...

An integrated ambient intelligence system for a Smart Lab environment

The goal of the ambient intelligence system is not only to enhance the way people communicate with the surrounding environment but also to advance safety measures and enrich human lives. In this paper, we introduce an integrated ambient intelligence system (IAmIS) to perceive the presence of people, identify them, determine their locations, and provide suitable interaction with them. The proposed framework can be applied in various application domains such as a smart house, authorisation, surveillance, crime prevention, and many others. The proposed system has five components: body detection and tracking, face recognition, controller, monitor system, and interaction modules. The system deploys RGB cameras and Kinect depth sensors to monitor human activity. The developed system is designed to be fast and reliable for indoor environments. The proposed IAmIS can interact directly with the environment or communicate with humans acting on the environment. Thus, the system behaves as an intelligent agent. The system has been deployed in our research lab and can recognise lab members and guests to the lab as well as track their movements and have interactions with them depending upon their identity and location within the lab.

An integrated ambient intelligence system for a Smart Lab environment

The goal of the ambient intelligence system is not only to enhance the way people communicate with the surrounding environment but also to advance safety measures and enrich human lives. In this paper, we introduce an integrated ambient intelligence system (IAmIS) to perceive the presence of people, identify them, determine their locations, and provide suitable interaction with them. The proposed framework can be applied in various application domains such as a smart house, authorisation, surveillance, crime prevention, and many others. The proposed system has five components: body detection and tracking, face recognition, controller, monitor system, and interaction modules. The system deploys RGB cameras and Kinect depth sensors to monitor human activity. The developed system is designed to be fast and reliable for indoor environments. The proposed IAmIS can interact directly with the environment or communicate with humans acting on the environment. Thus, the system behaves as an intelligent agent. The system has been deployed in our research lab and can recognise lab members and guests to the lab as well as track their movements and have interactions with them depending upon their identity and location within the lab.

Shinya Inoué: A Long Career Advancing Microscopy and Cell Biology (1921-2019).

Shinya Inoué: A Long Career Advancing Microscopy and Cell Biology (1921-2019).

Mentoring and Education: A Lifetime of Experience and Learning.

As recipient of the 2018 Robert M. Nerem Education and Mentorship Medal from the ASME, I was asked to prepare an article to contribute my reflections on these topics, that arise whenever we offer advice and guidance to our younger colleagues. This represents my personal views on Bob Nerem, after whom the award is named, my experiences that have impacted me as a mentor, and some words of advice, offered cautiously and with qualifications, with regard to best practices in mentoring.

The urgent need for modification of scientific ranking indexes to facilitate scientific progress and diminish academic bullying.

Academic bullying occurs when senior scientists direct abusive behavior such as verbal insults, public shaming, isolation, and threatening toward vulnerable junior colleagues such as postdocs, graduate students and lab members. We believe that one root cause of bullying behavior is the pressure felt by scientists to compete for rankings designed to measure their scientific worth. These ratings, such as the h-index, have several unintended consequences, one of which we believe is academic bullying. Under pressure to achieve higher and higher rankings, in exchange for positive evaluations, grants and recognition, senior scientists exert undue pressure on their junior staff in the form of bullying. Lab members have little or no recourse due to the lack of fair institutional protocols for investigating bullying, dependence on grant or institutional funding, fear of losing time and empirical work by changing labs, and vulnerability to visa cancellation threats among international students. We call for institutions to reconsider their dependence on these over-simplified surrogates for real scientific progress and to provide fair and just protocols that will protect targets of academic bullying from emotional and financial distress.

Open Up - the Mission Statement of the Control of Impulsive Action (Ctrl-ImpAct) Lab on Open Science.

The present paper is the mission statement of the Control of Impulsive Action (Ctrl-ImpAct) Lab regarding Open Science. As early-career researchers (ECRs) in the lab, we first state our personal motivation to conduct research based on the principles of Open Science. We then describe how we incorporate four specific Open Science practices (i.e., Open Methodology, Open Data, Open Source, and Open Access) into our scientific workflow. In more detail, we explain how Open Science practices are embedded into the so-called ‘co-pilot’ system in our lab. The ‘co-pilot’ researcher is involved in all tasks of the ‘pilot’ researcher, that is designing a study, double-checking experimental and data analysis scripts, as well as writing the manuscript. The lab has set up this co-pilot system to increase transparency, reduce potential errors that could occur during the entire workflow, and to intensify collaborations between lab members. Finally, we discuss potential solutions for general problems that could arise when practicing Open Science.

Why some professors welcome new lab members with clear expectations—in writing

Why some professors welcome new lab members with clear expectations—in writing

Negotiating language choice in multilingual lab meetings: voices from domestic and international students in Taiwan

ABSTRACT This article examines language practice in international higher education (HE) in non-Anglophone countries, with a focus on language choice and negotiation in engineering and science lab meetings among culturally and linguistically diverse students and professors. Analyses of 53 in-depth interviews with students and professors in a research university in Taiwan show that the professors addressed the linguistic diversity among domestic and international students by imposing an English policy or having an open policy for the lab meetings. Whatever the policy is, the language choice was subject to constant negotiations among all lab members, leading to dynamic flows and configurations of translanguaging. The language choice and negotiation is embedded in the local-global tensions in that local students’ language preference is the local language Chinese, while international students’ language preference is the global lingua franca English. The study suggests that multilingual multimodal academic communication in international HE is natural but not all language choices are equally inclusive and conducive to learning for all members. This study has provided a comprehensive picture and nuanced analyses of language choice in multilingual lab meetings. Future research with discourse data would enrich the present findings to further explicate optimal translanguaging practices in international HE.

MSphere of Influence: the Value of Simplicity in Experiments and Solidarity among Lab Members.

Nicholas Wallace studies how human papillomaviruses cause cancer throughout the genital and oropharyngeal tracts as well as in the skin. These viruses inhibit host DNA repair to promote their life style and in doing increase the risk of oncogenic mutations. In this mSphere of Influence article, he reflects on how two papers influenced him. "Human Papillomaviruses Activate the ATM DNA Damage Pathway for Viral Genome Amplification upon Differentiation" by C. A. Moody and L. Laimins (PLoS Pathog 5:e10000605, 2009, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1000605) reminded him of the power of straightforward approaches, while "Forty-Five Years of Cell-Cycle Genetics" by B. Reid et al. (B. J. Reid, J. G. Culotti, R. S. Nash, and J. R. Pringle, Mol Biol Cell 26:4307-4312, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1091/mbc.E14-10-1484) gave him the inspiration for his lab management style.

Sean Wu.

Sean Wu.

Heinrich Taegtmeyer: "All is in Flux".

Heinrich Taegtmeyer: "All is in Flux".