Lab Orientation

Welcome!

You’ve just joined the lab. Congrats! Here is what to do to get started.

Getting around

The lab is located in Berkeley Way West (BWW), 2121 Berkeley Way.

Mariam’s office, desks for core lab members, lab meeting rooms, and flex rooms are on the 3rd floor. Testing rooms (aka “procedure space”) are on the 2nd floor (2403 is a large cubicle room with windows; 2414 is a small dark room). When not used for running experiments, procedure space can also be used as working space for RAs.

The 3rd floor office space is locked at all times because of the open workstations and computers. Access to the locked part of the 3rd floor is with Card Key Access. To get access, you will need a Cal1 ID Card and Mariam’s approval. Please talk to Mariam to get Card Key Access to the 3rd floor. The 2nd floor testing rooms require a metal key to gain access. Please talk to Mariam to get a key.

The fMRI scanners are in Berkeley’s Brain Imaging Center.

First Steps

Read the lab manual.
Get your Cal 1 Card so that you can get access to the 3rd floor of BWW. Talk to Mariam about getting access to the 3rd floor office space and 2nd floor testing space.
Give the lab manager a photo of yourself, your pronouns, a brief description of your interests, a fun fact about you, and your CV for the lab website.
Ask the lab manager to give you access to the lab calendars and add you to the lab listservs.
Ask the lab manager to give you access to the lab Slack.
Ask the lab manager how to log in to the “Internal” page on the lab website.
Look at the IRB Information part of this Wiki. Make sure to do all the required training and read and sign the SOP document. We are funded by NSF and NIH, so make sure to do the IRB training that is required for NSF- and NIH-funded work. Then, send the signed SOP document and your training certificates to Mariam and the lab manager. Make sure to either write your own IRB protocol or be added to an existing one for the lab. Talk to Mariam about which is appropriate for you.

WiFi

For information on how to use secure WiFi connections, see here.

Lab Computer Login

The password for the running room computers can be found on the “Internal” part of the lab webpage.

Lab Printing

We do not have a printer yet, but you can print at a UC Berkeley library until we do.

If you need photocopies for a course, course-specific copy codes are available. Contact psychadmin@berkeley.edu to submit a request. Large scale copying (e.g., of final exams) is outsourced; as such, please submit large order requests 72 business hours in advance. Email these requests (see below) with your documents / exam as a PDF to psychadmin@berkeley.edu with the following information:

File name:

Black & White / Color:

Single / Double sided:

Collated (Y/N) :

Stapled (Y/N):

Total of original pages:

Total number of copies:

The date and time you need your copies:

If you need copies for your research, you can get a research-specific copy code from Shorena (shorena@berkeley.edu).

Getting reimbursed for travel and other expenses

Contact Tanya Robles trobles@berkeley.edu for assistance. Also see here for instructions on filing for reimbursement online, if applicable.

Tips on research training

A lot of research gets published every day, and it can be hard to keep up. Use an RSS feed (e.g., Feedly) or subscribe to journal table of contents to keep up on the latest work. You can also get science news and hear about new papers on Bluesky*. Make sure to get alerts for preprints, too (e.g., neuroscience-tagged papers on bioRxiv). You can also keep up with the latest research by doing periodic searches on Google Scholar or Pubmed, and sorting the results by date.

Browse article titles for relevant ones, read the abstract to see how relevant it is, and read the paper in full if it is important for your work or if you find it interesting. Feel free to share papers with other lab members via Slack, or send the PDF to the lab via the lab list-serv.

Tip: Off campus and can’t access a paper (because it’s behind a paywall)? Add Berkeley’s libproxy bookmarklet to your bookmarks (see here for instructions), and go there when you hit a paywall page. Sign in using your CalNet ID. You should now have access to the PDF.

You should also make a Google Scholar profile, and Google will alert you when relevant research is published, given your publications and the papers you cite, and will also alert you when someone cites you.

Finally, you’ll have to keep track of all the great ideas you have as you read! I recommend using something like OneNote to organize your thoughts and questions.

*Speaking of Bluesky, consider joining! Not only is it a great way of finding out what other scientists are doing, and hearing about new papers, but it’s a good way to let people know who you are. Science networking is important, and at the very least you make cool new science friends. If you’re not sure what to start, look at the people that Mariam follows on Bluesky, and follow the ones that look interesting to you too.