The Samelson Lab Mission is to do rigorous open science. We love collaboration and strive for transparency and joy in our science. We believe great science is made possible by our lab values that emphasize mentorship, well-being, and taking care of each other. This document spells out expectations, values, and hopes for the lab and we hope to improve on everything laid out here!
The mission of the Samelson lab is to provide a welcoming, inclusive, rigorous, and transparent environment for research and training. We want our lab members to feel the joy of scientific discovery and reach their full potential. Our research vision is to understand how proteins aggregate, how cells control protein aggregation, how that makes certain cells vulnerable or resilient to specific types of protein aggregation, and how that leads to disease. How do specific cellular gene expression programs and cellular environments contribute to deciding a proteins’ conformational fate? We like to combine biophysical characterization of key processes that control protein misfolding with systems-level approaches (like CRISPR-screening) to answer this question.
1. Belonging: We strive to create an environment where people from all backgrounds are comfortable making mistakes, asking questions, and being vulnerable both personally and scientifically. We seek to build an environment where lab members have genuine trust in one another and can achieve their potential. We believe people must be comfortable being themselves to reach their full potential.
2. Rigor: We seek to hold each other to the highest standards. Communication and reception of criticism should come from a place of good intentions. Meticulous record keeping is also essential for rigorous and reproducible science.
3. Initiative: When we see things that could be done better, or need fixing, we make a wholehearted attempt to fix those things ourselves. If equipment in the lab is broken, we do not wait for the next person to encounter the problem. The same is true for our institution and society at large. If we see something that is wrong, we get involved and try to fix it.
4. Respect: Science is done in teams, and the foundation of interpersonal interactions is mutual respect. In our lab, we foster a respectful environment and our interactions within and outside the lab are done from a place of mutual respect.
5. Curiosity: We want to encourage and nurture people’s curiosity about the world and encourage lab members to ask and answer questions. Take joy that we are here to figure out new things!
6. Passion: We want people to be themselves and be passionate about their work-life and life-life. We are here to make sure that happens!