17 Specific Expectations
17.1 Undergraduate thesis students
You have 8 months to complete a research project and produce a well polished thesis document. This is not a lot of time. When you first arrive in the lab we will work together to decide on a focused, feasible research project that is of mutual interest to us both. You may be paired with a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow in the lab, or you may be paired with me! It depends on the project.
You are expected to meet with me regularly to review progress. This is our chance together to make sure that your project is progressing and that you will be able to complete it successfully. I am here to help. You drive the bus, I provide advice and feedback … but you are the driver.
You are also expected to take advantage of the knowledge and experience of your fellow lab members: graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research staff, and volunteers. We are all here to help each other learn. We are all busy but part of our lab culture is to foster collaboration and mentoring so please do not hesitate to approach fellow lab members for help. We are not here to do your research or solve your research-related problems but we can and should be able to show you where to look for solutions. On this point: it is not a competition. We don’t draw boundaries around our ideas. We include each other as co-authors when scientifically appropriate. Including others on your project does no diminish your accomplishments. We help each other in this lab.
17.2 Masters students
You have 2 years to complete a research project and produce a well polished thesis document, and also to complete whatever coursework is required for your MSc degree. Your research project should be something that is publishable no matter how the results turn out. We will work together to come up with a project that fits the bill. A MSc thesis typically involves a single scientific question and a single study (sometimes composed of 2 or 3 small experiments) designed to test a specific hypothesis. The scientific question ought to be novel in the context of the existing literature, and of interest to other researchers doing work in the field of sensorimotor neuroscience.
Often a novel scientific question involves the development of novel techniques or experimental paradigms. You will take the lead here. We have many sources of technical help and experience both within the lab (including me) but also among the other labs in the WIRB. You will learn to draw on these sources of assistance to implement your experiments the way you want them implemented. Ours is not a “plug and play” kind of a lab, though occasionally a project will build on a previously developed experimental paradigm. The most interesting scientific questions do not have a pre-canned solution.
As a graduate student you are in charge of seeing your research project through to completion. I am here to guide you and to help by providing critical feedback, suggestions, advice, and encouragement. The more we interact the more likely you are to stay on track. It is your responsibility to ensure that this happens. I am here to help.
You are also expected to take advantage of the knowledge and experience of your fellow lab members: graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research staff, and volunteers. We are all here to help each other learn. We are all busy but part of our lab culture is to foster collaboration and mentoring so please do not hesitate to approach fellow lab members for help. We are not here to do your research or solve your research-related problems but we can and should be able to show you where to look for solutions. On this point: it is not a competition. We don’t draw boundaries around our ideas. We include each other as co-authors when scientifically appropriate. Including others on your project does no diminish your accomplishments. We help each other in this lab.
You are responsible for applying for funding to support your salary (e.g. OGS, NSERC, CIHR, etc). In the absence of external awards I will support you using funds from my research grants, providing that you take on teaching assistant positions (where possible) to partially offset the funds required.
17.3 PhD students
A PhD is the highest scholarly level one can achieve in a chosen academic discipline and is awarded after completion of a 4-year course of study. A PhD thesis document (a “dissertation”) is produced based on the work, which is examined by a committee composed of Professors from Western as well as an external examiner from a different University. There is also an oral examination by the same committee.
You have 4 years to complete a PhD and to complete whatever coursework is required for your PhD program. A PhD dissertation is typically composed of 5 or more chapters. Chapter 1 is a General Introduction—a literature review in the context of your thesis topic. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are individual studies. Typically each of them are published in peer reviewed journals (or to-be submitted) papers. Chapter 5 is a General Discussion in which you synthesize the results of your experiments and discuss the implications of your findings in the context of the existing literature. Depending on the nature of the experiments, sometimes two inner chapters instead of three is acceptable (but not typically). More than three is OK but that is pushing the limits of the patience of your dissertation examiners.
We will work together when you start, to develop a general scientific question, hypothesis, or theory, that guides the subsequent development of individual experiments/studies. The general scientific question ought to be novel in the context of the existing scientific literature and of interest to other researchers working in the field of sensorimotor neuroscience. Each individual study should be publishable in high-quality peer reviewed scientific journals such as Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology, etc. Sometimes Chapter 1 also turns out to be publishable in the form of a review article.
As a PhD student, you will rapidly learn to become independent in the lab. As with MSc students, you will be primarily responsible for drawing on technical and scientific assistance within the lab and across the other labs in the WIRB in order to implement the experimental paradigms that you want to use to test your scientific ideas. I am here to help and to guide this process, but you are in charge of your research project. You will learn to become independent in the lab so that by the middle of your PhD you will be coming to me with new ideas, new pilot data, and the results of tinkering in the lab, looking for your next interesting scientific question. You should not expect to rely solely on me to hand you scientific questions for your thesis studies. However, you can rely on my experience and knowledge to help guide you towards scientific questions that are interesting, relevant for the field, and feasible in the the context of graduate studies. We will work together to help you develop the scientific questions that guide your thesis work. At the beginning, the balance may be more on my end but towards the middle/end of your thesis work you will likely be convincing me of the importance of new ideas that you generate yourself.
You must pursue research questions that interest and excite you. Do not make it a goal to think up questions you think I will like, or ideas you think the big shots in the field will like, or experiments that you think can be published in Nature or Science or some other high-end scientific journal. This is a recipe for disaster. The motivation for pursuing your PhD research must come from within, not from me, or from anyone else. This is absolutely critical. A PhD is a lengthy process that involves many ups and downs. You must be motivated from within and one of the best ways this can happen is if you are pursuing scientific questions that excite you. I can certainly help you navigate the literature and the scientific landscape, and give you feedback about your ideas. We can work together to develop your own ideas but they must be your own. You must enjoy the process of working on a PhD, not just the anticipated outcomes of the degree (fame, fortune, etc.) If you don’t enjoy the work itself, it will be a very rough time and it will be difficult to succeed.
You are also expected to take advantage of the knowledge and experience of your fellow lab members: graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research staff, and volunteers. We are all here to help each other learn. We are all busy but part of our lab culture is to foster collaboration and mentoring so please do not hesitate to approach fellow lab members for help. We are not here to do your research or solve your research-related problems but we can and should be able to show you where to look for solutions. On this point: it is not a competition. We don’t draw boundaries around our ideas. We include each other as co-authors when scientifically appropriate. Including others on your project does no diminish your accomplishments. We help each other in this lab.
You are responsible for applying for funding to support your salary (e.g. OGS, NSERC, CIHR, etc). In the absence of external awards I will support you using funds from my research grants, providing that you take on teaching assistant positions (where possible) to partially offset the funds required.
17.4 Postdoctoral Fellows
You will typically begin with a one or two year contract providing salary and benefits during which time your job is to pursue original scientific research, in service of getting a job, either in academia or in the private sector. As a postdoc you are expected to be independent in the lab. There are many scientific and technical resources to draw upon and I am here to help.
I will support the pursuit of any scientific questions that are of mutual interest to us both. Your research is your own and you may take it with you when you leave, and continue to pursue it. This is your chance to pursue a new line of research with the full support of a lab environment around you, without being burdened by the need to apply for grants, teach, or do administration (as you will have to do if you pursue an academic job).
You are also expected to take advantage of the knowledge and experience of your fellow lab members: graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research staff, and volunteers. We are all here to help each other learn. We are all busy but part of our lab culture is to foster collaboration and mentoring so please do not hesitate to approach fellow lab members for help. We are not here to do your research or solve your research-related problems but we can and should be able to show you where to look for solutions. On this point: it is not a competition. We don’t draw boundaries around our ideas. We include each other as co-authors when scientifically appropriate. Including others on your project does no diminish your accomplishments. We help each other in this lab.
As a postdoc you should expect to (and embrace the chance) to take on a mentorship role within our lab and within other labs with which we collaborate.
You are responsible for applying for funding to support your salary (e.g. OGS, NSERC, CIHR, etc). Typically an initial contract is for one or two years of support from my research grants. In some cases this may be extended but this is highly dependent on circumstance, budget, etc.
17.5 Research Assistants
As an employee of the lab your role is to perform whatever duties I have assigned to you. Sometimes this will involve working with other lab members, helping them with their research projects. My role is to make sure that your duties are well defined and that you have the resources you need to carry out your work. While your duties might involve working with other lab members, ultimately you report to me. I regard working as a research staff member in my lab as an opportunity to learn new research-related skills in a supportive and friendly environment. If you find that every minute of the day is not occupied by the tasks I’ve assigned to you, please feel free to spend that time exploring your research-related interests (within reason). As a heuristic, if around 20% of your time is spent this way that is OK by me. Please come to me whenever you have questions or concerns about your work in the lab.