GUIDE FOR PROSPECTIVE LAB MEMBERS

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Our lab cares a lot about  all forms of diversity and wants to take active steps to allow anyone with interest in the lab to have a chance to join. For that reason we publish this guide with concrete expectations that we hope help future applicants know how to reach out. 

If this guide seems obvious to you great! You have the know-how passed along by scientists generations after generations.  Today we are gonna spread it further.

If you are interested in the lab show it!  Send an email or a contact sheet and do the following, it can be bief, or long, serious or funny:

Who are you? Let us know who you are. Where did you study? Who did you train with? It doesn't matter if they are famous or a great scientist or teacher. We want to know about you and your community.  Do you know someone our PI knows? 

What did you work on? We always want to know about cool science, so let us know what you studied. What motivated you to study that? Why was it cool?

Why are you now interested in joining the lab? We are very excited that you are considering working in our lab, so we really want to know what got you excited about it. Do you have any specific interests? Any ideas? A Philosophical predisposition to our work? A precise plan of what you want to do?

What techniques or concepts have you mastered? It's always useful to know what you know.  This helps us buid on a solid foundation! Any technique can really help the lab! What do you know how to do? What concepts have you mastered?

What techniques or concepts are you most excited to learn? If there is  technique the lab does that you wanna learn let us know. If there is something you want to learn that we don't know, also let us know. Our lab is open to always having people learn new things.

What kind of educational experience have you had? Tell us what you learned, where, how. Have you done interships, special workshops, etc. 

What are some documents that support who you are? A CV always is a good idea. Names and contacts of people you worked with or that were your teachers always helps. Papers , theses or things you've written are useful to get a sense of how you think.  Names, emails and Affiliations of possible scientists that could recommend you. Any websites or links or anything that confirms your enrollments or participations in labs if you are hard to find.

Do you bring your own funding or is there specific funding you can apply to? As our lab grows we hope to be self-funded but everything helps. If you have specific international scholarships that will support you from your own country please do mention it.

EXAMPLES

Below are examples of how I applied to labs in my career. It doesn't mean they are good. But It gives you an idea of our lab thinks and what we expect.

Dear Dr. Brecht,

My name is Juan Sanguinetti Scheck, I'm a graduate student at the Faculty of Sciences in Uruguay, currently finishing my MSc degree in Neuroscience supervised by Dr. Leonel Gomez in collaboration with Dr. Jacob Engelmann.  Your lab was recommended to me by Dr. Emilio Kropff ,(Argentinean, ex- post doc at the Moser Lab), who knows you and your Lab via Mortiz von Heimendahl. I inquired him about laboratories to do a PhD in electrophysiological recordings in freely moving animals, since I am interested in the link between action and perception. After reviewing your webpage and some of your work, I find your lab to be an ideal place for me to do a PhD. I find very appealing the possibility of studying subthreshold neural dynamics in active behavior and learning a novel technique that I could apply and teach In my country in the future.

My thesis topic is in image formation and active sensing in weakly electric fish. During my master I have published one paper and have two other papers accepted (papers attached), one of them in collaboration with Dr. Engelmann. I am also collaborating with Prof. Gerhard von der Emde of Universität Bonn and Dr. Kirsty Grant of UNIC lab in CNRS, Gif-sur-yvette, France. 

In relation to Education I have completed very productive research stays in the labs of Dr Engelmann and Dr Grant. I have attended two locally important neuroscience schools, the Latin-American School of Computational Neurosciences (LASCON 4) (http://sisne.org/?page_id=34&lang=en) and the Ricardo Miledi Neuroscience Training Program ( http://www.iibce.edu.uy/escuela/participantes.html ) for which I was awarded a two year fellowship for the SfN and a travel award to attend Neuroscience 2011 in DC. Although I have mainly worked with computers (MATLAB, NEURON, python), I have received training in both extracellular and intracellular recordings. And I'm very enthusiastic about making my own experiments and having long recording sessions. 

Finally, and I hope I didn't bore you to death with this email. Could you please let me know if you have PhD positions available in your group? There is funding available for Uruguayans in an agreement between Uruguay and the DAAD of germany ( http://www.mec.gub.uy/innovaportal/file/15142/1/convenio_mec_daad.pdf) ,  but you'll probably have a better idea of possible funding.  I will finish my master in December, and I would like to begin a PhD next year. 

I'm really sorry for the long email. I thank you in advance for reading this and considering me.

Kind regards,

Juan "Nacho" Sanguinetti Scheck

I attached my CV and my papers.

 Dear Nao,

I hope this email finds you well.

It was really great seeing you and Mitsuko at TENSS. I hope you both had a great time and you keep coming.  :)

I'm writing you to inquire about the possibility of visiting your lab and discussing postdoctoral opportunities.  I've defended my PhD in April and I'm currently finishing up on some papers, one of which (Hide and Seek) was just accepted in Science. :)

It took me a bit of time to write you about this. Even though I've been thinking about it for a long time. I've always really appreciated your work at TENSS and your qualities as a teacher and scientist. I have to say, I was specially excited with the work and the thought process you and Mistuko presented this year. I can see that your understanding of the role of dopamine and RPE is broadening and that you are embracing more naturalistic ways of studying it. You have such a great handle on this system both technically and conceptually, that the thought came to my mind, that I would be excited to contribute to studying the dopaminergic/Str/mPFC system in more naturalistic conditions.

I've been looking for postdoc positions to study the brain in naturalistic and ethologically relevant ways, but that usually comes at the expense of not being able to go as deep in understanding. I think your lab would be ideal, in that attacking the questions from multiple angles might result in understanding and I believe that working in your lab I would learn a lot as a scientist. I think this is a critical point for me. I think there is a lot I could learn.

Also, I think your are surrounded with other professors working from a genetic and ecology perspective, which might be interesting collaborations for me. For example, I think Hopi Hoekstra's current work on monogamous and polygamous Peromyscus mice could be potentially interesting in relation to other forms of novelty, like social novelty.

The quote from William James you cited in your recent paper points towards the necessity of studying the complexities of how the brain deals with figuring out an ever-changing world and updating its current model. Which I think includes the current model of the living agents we interact with. This makes me keen on visiting your lab and learning about the directions your lab is taking into the future and how I could potentially contribute.

Here I offer you a bit of info on my timeline and status. I write this a bit advanced in my postdoc search. 

-I have a standing offer from --------- and I also applied to a ------ independent fellowship. 

- I'm thinking about exploring this option as a way to improve my leaning while contributing with a different perspective.

-I'm really looking forward to deciding as soon as possible and starting somewhere sometime in April. 

-I will probably finish here in Berlin in December and I will visit my home during the summer for some good barbecues. 

I attach to this letter several pdfs. 

- My CV

- Two letters of recommendation from my previous supervisors.

- A cover letter and research statement that I'm preparing for ---- fellowship application, so that you get an idea of where some of my thinking is at. 

Thanks for your attention,

All the best

Nacho