【Mu-ming Poo lab's rules】态度值得学习！

Mu-ming Poo lab’s rules

Mu-ming Poo is head of the Division of Neurobiology,Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at University of California, Berkeley,California, USA. He is also director of the Institute of Neuroscience, ChineseAcademy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.

To all lab members:

Over the past several months, it has become clear to me thatif there is no drastic change in the lab, Poo lab will soon cease to be aproductive, first-rate lab that you chose to join in the first place. Labprogress reports over the past six months have clearly shown the lack ofprogress in most projects. One year ago, when we first moved to Berkeley, Iexpressed clearly to everyone my expectation from each one in the lab. The mostimportant thing is what I consider to be sufficient amount of time and effortin the lab work. I mentioned that about 60 hr working time per week is what Iconsider the minimal time an average successful young scientist in these dayshas to put into the lab work.

There may be a few rare lucky fellows like Florian, who hadtwo Nature papers in his sleeve already, can enjoy life for a while and stillget a job offer from Harvard. No one else in the lab has Florian’s luxury toplay around.

Thus I am imposing strict rules in the lab from now on:

1. Every one works at least 50 hr a week in the lab (e.g.,8+ hr a day, six days a week). This is by far lower than what I am doing everyday and throughout most of my career. You may be smarter or do not want to beas successful, but I am not asking you to match my time in the lab.

2. By working, I mean real bench work. This does not includesurfing on the computer and sending and receiving e-mails for non-scientificmatters unrelated to your work (you can do this after work in the lab or athome), and excessive chatting on nonscientific matters. No long lunch breakexcept special occasions. I suggest that everyone puts in at least 6 hr concentratedbench work and 2+ hr reading and other research-related activity each day.Reading papers and books should be done mostly after work. More time can bespent on reading, literature search and writing during working hours when youare ready for writing a paper.

3. I must be informed in person by e-mail (even in myabsence from the lab) when you are absent from the lab for a whole day or more.Inform me early your vacation plan. Taking more than 20 working days out of oneyear is the maximum to me. In fact, none of you are reporting any vacation andsick leave on your time sheet (against the university rule, although I havebeen signing the sheets), but you know roughly how many days you were not here.On the whole, I understand and accept the fact that you may not fulfill theabove requirements all the time, due to health reasons, occasional personalbusiness. But if you do not like to follow the rules because it is simply a matter of choice of life style, I respect your choice but suggest you start making plans immediately and leave the lab by the end of January 31. I will do my best to help you to locate a lab to transfer or to find a job.

If you do accept the conditions I describe above, I am happyto continue to provide my best support to your work, hopefully more than I havedone in the past. I will review the progress of everyone in the lab by the endof June of 2002. I expect everyone to have made sufficient progress in theresearch so that a good paper is in sight (at least to the level of J.Neuroscience). If you cannot meet this goal at that time, I will have to askyou to prepare to leave my lab by the end of

August.

Mu-ming