SAFE Labs

OttLab_2025: The PI conducts an onboarding meeting introducing you to the lab, the team, and the lab’s resources on Notion. The onboarding process is outlines on our lab Notion wiki and includes the Lab Handbook, how to join our team’s slack, calendar, how to get emails, enroll at the university, find information on housing and international’s support, and so on. In addition, new team members will be doubled with a buddy, usually an experienced lab member.

ReinhardLab_2025: Starting in a new lab, and potentially in a new city and country, is stressful. We have several procedures in place to help with this process.

In the first week(s) every new lab member will have a 1o1 meeting with the PI where some or all of the following points are covered (depending on the role of the team member): (a) this handbook, (b) access to lab calendars and resources, (c) general expectations including work hours, presence, communication, (d) necessary courses and licenses, (e) next steps for practical training and project identification.

Furthermore, the following information and help is provided:

PhD candidates: Since PhD candidates are hired by the graduate school and not by individual labs, help with visa, travel, paperwork as well as first introductions to the institute will be organized by the student secretariat. A lot of useful information can also be found in the student wiki. All lab members are willing to help in individual cases with translating from Italian, communicating at different offices etc. The first weeks and months are dedicated to courses and identifying the best lab for each candidate.

MSc students / interns: Also here the student secretariat will be involved in most of the administrative aspects.

Postdocs / technicians: The Mobility office of SISSA is responsible to help new researchers and technicians, especially if they come from abroad.

TreurLab_2025: The full onboarding document is still under construction, but as an example some snippets are provided here:

As a PhD student, you will first be enrolled in the Amsterdam UMC doctoral school. You can find further information about the doctoral school, which also provides many interesting courses that you can follow here. At the beginning of your PhD you need to contact the doctoral school to register and complete a form about the content of your PhD and your supervision team (co-promotor(s) and promotor(s)).

Within Amsterdam UMC there are eight so-called Research Institutes. You can be affiliated with a maximum of two Research institutes. Being affiliated with a research institute is useful because they organize symposia, networking events, workshops and it allows you to stay up to day with what others in your field are doing. The most relevant ones for our group are: Amsterdam Neuroscience, Amsterdam Public Health, Amsterdam Cardiovascular Sciences. Within the Research institutes, there are specific subgroups that you can join (again a maximum of 2).

Besides the official Research Institutes, members of our group recently initiated the Genetics Network Amsterdam (GENE Amsterdam) which is a network of researchers working in the broader field of genetics across Amsterdam. An official website was launched in November 2022. We recommend you to get your own personal page added to the website and to publish any relevant news item or blogs about your research on the website (contact x for anything related to the website). GENE Amsterdam also has regular research meetings which are very useful to attend, please e-mail x to get added to the GENE Amsterdam mailing list. There is also an annual research meeting of GENE Amsterdam.

RadzisheuskayaLab_2025: We follow the standard ICR onboarding process, which can be found here: LINK NOT PUBLIC. In addition, every new lab member will be paired with a “lab buddy” who will arrange for you an introduction to all the lab resources.

CoenLab_2025: These are some initial admin steps that should happen (some even before you arrive at UCL). If you’ve been in the lab for a week and any of these haven’t been covered, ask someone!

• Sign a contract/enroll
• Get added to payroll
• Schedule weekly One-on-One meeting with Pip
  • Make sure you have your own notion page
• Create your own lab notebook in the lab repo
• Get your UCL ID, email and access card
• Add you information to the Lab Members database
• Arrange a desk and computer set up that works for you
• Get your Personal License (PIL) for animal work
  • Get an induction to the BSU and complete schedule 1 training
• Fire and health and safety inductions
• Get added to:
  • The Lab Calendar
  • Mailing list (which gives access to OneDrive, order sheets, etc.)
  • The lab Splitwise
  • Lab slack (and change your image from the default!)
  • Anat4 slack (and change your image from the default!)
  • Lab notion—if you can see this, you are added already ;)
• Lab Fusion 360 workspace for CAD modelling.
• Set up a health test with occupational-health-services (required for access to BSU)
• Get an account on the Lab Server and make sure you can login.
• Complete all online mandatory courses

AeryJonesLab_2026: A complete and frequently updated onboarding checklist is on the lab wiki.