Tools & Tips | How-To Series

Develop an understanding of the challenges and growth opportunities that await you as you lead a team in the lab.

Articles of Interest

• Special Feature: Staying Well - Safety in the Lab – J. Austin
  Academic science labs are such dangerous places that it really isn't possible to guarantee your safety. All you can do is be vigilant and remove some of the risk — for you, your colleagues, and future scientists who might otherwise suffer from today's poor choices.
  
  • - Keeping Safe: Some Cautionary Tales
  • - Wear Your Safety Goggles
  • - Lab Safety Requires Training and Commitment
• Managing Knowledge Workers – R. Austin
  A management expert provides insight into the challenges of managing knowledge-based enterprises — like your laboratory.
• Opportunities: Stealing Time – P. Fiske
  No matter where you end up professionally, your effectiveness (and your personal happiness) will depend in large part on your ability to manage your time successfully.
• Opportunities: Intellectual Property, Part 1 – P. Fiske
  A basic understanding of the legal basis of intellectual property can prepare you to make good decisions in the management of your scientific creations.
• Opportunities: Intellectual Property, Part 2 – P. Fiske
  So you think that invention belongs to you? Think again.
• Project Management for Scientists – Stanley E. Portny and Jim Austin
  Some very smart tips, from the author of Project Management for Dummies.
• Lab Dynamics: Science at the Balcony – C. Cohen and S. Cohen
  How you discuss content or data can be as important as the content or data itself.
• Project Management for Scientists, Part 1: An Overview – Meenakshi Kashyap
  In general, project managers need to have very strong people skills, negotiating skills, and the ability to resolve conflict and communicate effectively.
• Project Management for Scientists, Part 2: Getting Experience – Meenakshi Kashyap
  Salaries for Ph.D.s with project-management experience tend to be higher, but jobs for people with a bachelor's or master's degree and relevant experience are more plentiful.
• Take Your Worst Estimate and Double It: Project Management for Postdocs – Rich Price
  Life as a scientist, especially for postdocs, revolves around a project, or more likely, several projects.
• Project Management and Discovery – Rob Austin
  The fundamental problem with many conventional project management frameworks is probably even more relevant to science than it is to business: They simply aren't adaptive enough.