SAFE Labs

Anonymous lab:

Each lab member will have a designated Google Doc (visible only to you and [the PI]) for agendas and notes for our weekly meetings. (Following templates posted on Twitter by Susana Wadgymar and Michael Hoffman.) By 11am on the day of our weekly meeting, update this file with the following information (don’t spend any more than 15 minutes on this, and don’t feel the need to use complete sentences):

• Make a short agenda of any things you’d like to discuss in our meeting, in addition to your research plans and progress (if you have anything else to discuss, which may not be the case). I may add to these as well.
• Annotate the plans from the previous week using the ‘Comment’ feature or by adding text in a different color. We’ll use these notes as a tool for assessing whether we are developing SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound) plans
• Write a brief self-reflection on the previous week. This reflection is open-ended, but I suggest discussing what went well, what you found to be the most challenging, what you did to try to overcome those challenges, lessons learned, things that I/others can help with, and notes to yourself on what you would do differently in the upcoming weeks.
• Draft a list of plans and priorities for the upcoming week.

MayorLab_2026:

Monthly meetings: Monthly small-group meetings serve a complementary purpose to weekly progress meetings: each trainee summarizes recent progress, sets goals for the coming month, and hears from peers about adjacent projects, fostering broader scientific awareness across the lab.

Before each meeting, every trainee should prepare a brief bullet-point summary of work completed since the last meeting and enter it into the shared SharePoint document. Trainees should also ensure that experiments are time-stamped in eLab and that the corresponding PDFs have been uploaded to the dedicated SharePoint folder. One new set of results or experiments can be presented in details but other new results should be presented during the bi-weekly progress meetings or during unscheduled check-ins (see below). After each meeting, Thibault will summarize the key priorities discussed.

At least once a year, one monthly meeting should be dedicated entirely to publication planning — ideally following a research lab meeting presentation. For that session, trainees are expected to prepare a story outline indicating which results will be presented in each figure.

OttLab_2025:

Prepare a written agenda for each 1-on-1 meeting with the PI. Document and summarize meetings afterwards on Notion (see Notion for details), highlighting short- and medium turm action items.

ReinhardLab_2025:

All lab members are requested to send a short summary email to the PI after each 1o1 meeting. These can be bullet-point style but should contain concrete plans/agreements/outcomes. This format ensures that there’s a paper trail of what has been discussed and agreed on, but also that the PI and the lab member have the same understanding of the discussed matter.

BioKTGroup_2026:

• The last five minutes produce a to-do list: what you will do before the next meeting. The PI keeps these lists as a running, dated record, newest first.
• The next meeting opens by reading that list back: what got done, what didn’t, and why.

CoenLab_2025:

Every lab member has a 1-on-1 meeting with their supervisor once per week. For post docs and PhD students, this will be Pip, but for Masters students and undergraduates, this may be another lab member. There is a dedicted (private) page for each lab member’s 1-on-1 meeting.

The supervisor, and lab member, both have responsibilities during this meeting. In brief: both parties should add discussion points to the meeting page throughout the week, and then during the meeting, they should go over these discussion points and update the to-do list. After the meeting, the lab member should write a summary of the meeting (100-200 words).

EpiForecasts_2026:

Individual meetings with your supervisor (at least one hour per week)

Each group member has at least one dedicated hour per week of their supervisor’s time. The default is a meeting, but you can use this however is most useful — a code review, written feedback on a draft, or skipping it entirely if you don’t need it that week. These meetings are also the place to discuss career development, training, and any institutional or personal matters. If you want feedback on something specific, share it at least a day before the meeting.

We maintain a Google Doc (or similar) for ongoing notes — updated every meeting with a short summary of discussion and action points.

OPTIMlab_2026:

I will ask you to make your own notes during the meeting, noting down key next steps and actions. Please share these with me after the meeting so we can discuss at the next meeting to see how the items have progressed. This can be done either via email, a Teams message or by adding them as tasks to an online Planner schedule (https://tasks.office.com/)

SuperLab_2026:

Keep a record of our meetings (what we discussed and decided on) where we can both access them (Teams).

For all supervision meetings, please send an agenda ahead of each meeting, and a summary of what was discussed following each meeting. Please upload these to your dedicated PhD Teams channel, and send copies by email to supervisors who do not have access to Teams.

AeryJonesLab_2026:

Please summarize what we talked about in a brief Slack message to me within a day after the meeting. This helps me keep track of everyone’s progress and ensure that we’re on the same page.

CarpenterSinghLab_2026:

You should take intellectual ownership of your projects by taking notes in meetings and sharing them with the project team afterward, making sure projects don’t stall or fall through the cracks.

DenmanLab_2026:

Mentor and mentee are to write down timelines for expected development together and trade versions. Progress (scientific and professional) is evaluated on fixed schedules, as written by the mentee; both provide constructive feedback in writing so it can be referenced. We have regular meetings, with formal meeting agendas, and shared documentation of meeting notes.

Bi-weekly Meeting agendas have the following four sections:

1. Overall goal: this is a goal that is unlikely to change on a week to week basis, but seeing it is a reminder of what the mid-range goal is
2. Weekly Goal Status: what your weekly goals were from last time, and whether they happened
3. Weekly Goals: Goals for the upcoming week
4. How Dan can help: What i can do to make weekly goals that were missed, or upcoming ones, happen.

GNlab_2026:

We do scheduled feedback once a month when you first start the job and at least once a quarter during your time with us.

• By 5pm the night before a feedback session, we ask that you write a brief note describing what you think is going well, how you think you can improve, any questions you have, and any suggestions you have for us. After the session, you will write up some brief notes summarizing the conversation.

IshiharaLab_2026:

1-1 meeting summaries (All members): After each 1-1 meeting with Keisuke, please email a brief summary of the discussion and any action items by the end of the next business day. This helps Keisuke and the lab member to follow up on any items and prepare for the next meeting.

JacksonResearchGroup_2026:

One-on-one meetings. Jackson holds weekly one-on-one meetings with graduate students and postdocs except during travel or other unavoidable commitments. Trainees should arrive with organized summaries of project status, recent data or outputs, and planned next steps. Each trainee shares a Google Doc with Jackson to track weekly and long-term goals. These meetings are used for troubleshooting, interpretation, planning, general concerns, and career development.

JiangLab_2026:

One-on-one meetings are 45-min, weekly meetings between each trainee and me. You can also schedule one-off one-on-one meetings with me. These meetings are designed for us to discuss any training and research-related issues in detail and to form plans for the near future. To keep track on our progress, I ask each trainee to maintain a shared document with me to record the decisions and action items after each meeting and follow-ups. I expect trainees to attend all their one-on-one meetings. I understand that sometimes there is nothing to report, so occasional cancellation is fine. To cancel a meeting, please email me at least a day before. That said, note that even if you have nothing to report, sometimes meeting in person can still be advantageous and it may be worth our time to still check in.

McDermottLab_2026:

I ask that each person maintain a document with a record of the content of our meetings, and to send me a brief email summary of our meeting taken from this document after we have it. This summary should include the main points we discussed, and conclusions from the discussions, and the plan for the coming week. This serves to consolidate what we discussed in memory, to ensure that we are on the same page, and to give us something we can refer to during the week as we move forward with action items. I read these meeting summaries without fail, and usually respond with comments. If you ask me to do something during our weekly meetings (or any other time), and I say yes, please either make sure I have written it down on my to-do list, or include it in the email summary to make sure I do it (preferably both).

MemoLab_2026:

At the beginning of each semester, I will set a schedule to meet with each full-time lab member for one hour a week. If we do not have anything to discuss in a given week, that’s fine- we can just say hi or cancel it. Before each meeting, update your meeting agenda; this will also be a place where we document next steps. I am also happy to have additional project-focused meetings as needed– just ask or book an appointment on my calendar.

MolecularEcologyLab_2026:

I ask that my mentees meet with me regularly during the semester, and in advance of the meeting I recommend that you:

• Develop and share your agenda
• Summarize progress or pitfalls since our last meeting
• Create a shared record of our meeting notes so that we both know what was discussed.

MsEELab_2026:

All meetings start with a brief overview of the meeting agenda. Pablo will take notes of meetings and share them with participants through Google Docs. Other participants are encouraged to take notes of their own and/or complement the Google Doc to clear any misunderstandings. If a participant would like to record the meeting or use a note-taking app, they may do so with the consent of all other participants. Meetings (and notes) include agreed-upon action items to prioritize before the next meeting. These action items are set by participants through backwards design by reviewing the goals of the participants or group present and setting a course of action towards them.

ZhangLab_2026:

Weekly one-on-one meetings will be held for each member when they join the lab. We have Thursdays as our 1-1 meeting day!

• Every member will be assigned one or two major projects.
• We track everyone’s progressed on specific tasks using Trello. So we can generate “TODO” list on everyone’s Trello project board after each one-on-one meeting, and we mark the tasks as “Done” by examing it on our next one-on-one meeting. We will break down a “big task” into multiple measureable “small tasks”.