Welcome to the team! 🎉 Whether you're a student, an intern or a colleague, joining a new work environment can be a bit stressful. In order to ease your first days and set you up for the future, we compiled this guide and hope that you will find it useful.
The goal of this guide is first and foremost to help you acquire the same frame of reference, so you can then understand what we are talking about, the issues that we face and the solutions that we find. However, it is possible that some of the advice or things here might at first seem weird or useless. Trust us though, it will become handy some day 😉
This guide has been crafted by all past and current members of the team. It's our collective legacy, and it will be yours too. As such, by the end of your journey here, we hope that you will leave your mark in this document, by updating / improving / revising some of its content. Don't worry, you will see how to do that later.
I feel a bit lost
Send us a message, we're likely unaware of that!
I'm not sure what I should do and what my tasks are
Send us a message, we're likely unaware of that!
There's too much work for me
Send us a message, we're likely unaware of that!
There's not enough work for me
Send us a message, we're likely unaware of that!
In short, for any reason, do not hestitate to drop us a message!
Our team in centred around core values such as teamwork, continuous learning, friendly environment and aiming for the top.
We rely on a lot of internal communication (about stuff more or less related to work 😁), our ability to keep on learning and improving, a cool working environment (forget the formalities, ain't nobody got time for that!) and striving for the highest standards in terms of sciencific quality and honesty. We're strongly committed to open-science, i.e., working open by sharing our code, documentation, data (where possible) and expertise.
On a more abstract level, I believe in what I call the three-fold neuropsychology skill set. In short, I think that a neuropsychologist (and, by extension, people working on-related topics) should aim (when applicable) at developping 3 types of expertise: clinical abilities (neuro/psycho-pathology, assessment, therapy & rehabilitation, ...), technical skills (statistics, programming, signal processsing, ...) and theoretical knowledge (a diversified knowledge and understanding of the psychological and neuroscientific theories, frameworks and their history).
Note: this roadmap is typically something that has to be updated by the team, it's our collective responsibility. So if you notice that it's outdated, do make a Pull Request (see below if you don't know what it is) to update it!
Here are the projects that our team is currently working on:
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The Structure of Deception: Validation of the Lying Profile Questionnaire
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NeuroKit2: The Python Toolbox for Neurophysiological Signal Processing
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Psychological Determinants of the Susceptibility to Fake News amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
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The Process Model of Lying and Deception: The Study of Mental and Physiological Process of Deception
Pay a visit to your colleagues, introduce yourself, explore the building, locate the offices, find the toilets and the coffee machine.
Do whatever is required on the admin side, complete the ethical certification, the mandatory trainings, etc. Specifically at NTU, this often involves completing short courses online:
- CITI Certification (on ethics and integrity in research)
- WorkDay mandatory courses (if you are an employee) that pop up from time to time
We believe that the best way to start this journey is to get out there, listen to the ongoing discourses and get publicly engaged. And Twitter might be the very platform to do it 😉 It's great for the research arena because researchers can recruit participants for experiments and easily share and summarize their findings in threads, so you can keep up with the latest scientific news here. If you don't believe us, check-out this book about Twitter for researchers.
We have compiled a list of interesting accounts for you to start following, covering all sort of different topics (but always relevant). Later, don't forget to make a pull request (wondering what is a pull request? Continue to read) to add on to the list your favourite accounts!
Open them all in different tabs (CTRL + Left Click) and follow them all (even if you don't see any reason for it at first):
@Dom_Makowski , @ZenJuen , @tampham94 , @BrianNosek , @SachaEpskamp , @micahgallen , @EikoFried , @AcademicChatter , @Neuro_Skeptic , @neuropsychblog , @thoughtsofaphd , @ChelseaParlett , @ProfAndyField , @KordingLab , @djnavarro , @dsquintana , @easystats4u , @PsyBrief , @visceral_mind , @Nate__Haines , @psychopy , @GuyProchilo , @conscious_tlab , @jayvanbavel , @improbresearch , @chrisdc77 , @rlmcelreath , @michagaebler , @tjmahr , @hakwanlau , @LFeldmanBarrett , @patilindrajeets , @MicrobiomDigest , @BrianNosek , @mattansb , @APA , @jonaslindeloev , @thomasp85 , @allison_horst , @strengejacke , @lakens , @GaelVaroquaux , @manos_tsakiris , @ceptional , @JeffRouder , @EJWagenmakers , @FarlKriston , @TheStoicEmperor , @NeuroConsc , @anilkseth , @DrSFink , @hadleywickham , @PHDcomics , @NeuroscienceNew , ...
At first, you'll like have to force yourself a bit to open and check twitter from time to time (to make it easier, set it as favourite and download the app), but soon it will be filled with interesting content.
ResearchGate is a professional networking site for scientists and researchers to share, discover and discuss research. (It's like a researchers' version of LinkedIn). You can see what kinds of projects others are currently working on, and their past manuscripts and publications. You can also post and answer questions, as well as recommend certain works! So create an account and start following us and the researchers you like.
GitHubAs GitHub claims itself, it brings together the world's largest community of developers to discover, share, and build better software. Whether you're a beginner to programming or an expert, integrating into this community means you'll be constantly learning. It is a place where projects are shared openly and transparently, and you can simply watch any repository you're interested in to receive notifications of relevant updates.
We are using GitHub a lot for a lot of stuff, and therefore you'll need to become familiar with it. First off, let's start with 1) Creating an account for you (PS: do use a simple login like FirstnameSurname), 2) Watch this repo (by selecting Watching on the watch button in the top-right corner) so you'll get notified of updates, and 3) start using it as follows:
- Create a new issue in this repo
- Select the Introduce myself template
- Answer the questions
- post it 😁
- Finally, follow us @DominiqueMakowski, @Tam-Pham, @zen-juen
- Thinking Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman)
- The Art of Thinking Clearly (Rolf Dobelli)
- How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (Lisa Feldman Barrett)
- The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Oliver Sacks)
- The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime (Adrian Raine)
- ...
- You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them | Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality
- ...
- Mindhunter
- Fractured
- Joker
- ...
As said earlier, we use GitHub a lot, so it's a pre-requisite that you acquire this skill. However, it's quite tricky to get familiar and comfortable with it (even we struggle sometimes), and I'd say it's one of the most complicated thing you'll have to learn. But you cannot learn if you don't try, break things and succeed.
- Setting up your profile on the lab website
The first task is to set-up your profile on the lab website.
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Step 1: Fork the website repository
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Go to the (Github Page Repository of Clinical Brain Lab)[https://github.com/ClinicalBrainLab/clinicalbrainlab.github.io]
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Hit the fork button at the top right corner to make a copy of the repository in your Github account.
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After a few minutes of waiting, you should now see a repository with a name of
your-username/clinicalbrainlab.github.io.
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Step 2: Add your profile to the website
- In your newly copied repository, navigate to the folder
your-username/clinicalbrainlab.github.io/content. This is where all the concent of the website is stored. - Can you guess which file is the one storing the profiles of our lab members? By intuition or by try-and-error, you should now click on the file
people.Rmd. The extension .Rmd stands for markdown (or more specifically R markdown here). Don't worry too much if you are not familiar with the term. Read on! - By reading through the
people.Rmdfile, you can see that it's just like any another word document (except more powerful ^^). The "#" is used to create the sections. You should now click on the pencil symbol at the top of the document to start editing. - Locate the "section" that you belong to; whether you are a member of Research Scientists and Research Fellows or a member of the Undergraduate Students. If you can't find a section that accurately captures your role in the lab, do not hesitate to create a new one!
- Now, you can simply look at what is being written under the name of other members, copy it, and customize the section to make it yours!
- In your newly copied repository, navigate to the folder
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Step 3: Add your profile picture
- The very last step for you to customize your profile is to add a picture of yourself. Did you see this strange-looking line
<img src="/img/someone-name.jpg" alt="someone-name" width="25%" align="left" hspace=20" vspace="20"><br />? This line helps to add your picture to your profile. - Look for that one picture of yourself that you look the most amazing and upload it to the
your-username/clinicalbrainlab.github.io/static/imgfolder. You can name the file with a simple name e.g. your-name 😊 - Go back to the
people.Rmdfile and in that strange-looking line, replacesomeone-name.jpgwith the name of your picture file and its extension. So that it knows where to look for your picture.
- The very last step for you to customize your profile is to add a picture of yourself. Did you see this strange-looking line
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Step 4: Make a Pull Request
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You are almost finished! Go back to
your-username/clinicalbrainlab.github.iomain page to look for the Pull Rquest sign. Click on it.
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The page will show that you are trying to make a Pull Request from your repositorty "your-username/clinicalbrainlab.github.io" to the original repository clinicalbrainlab/clinicalbrainlab.github.io". Please make sure that the base is
sources. -
All the left for you to do is to click on that shiny green button to update your changes to the original repository.
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Congratulations! You have successfully updated your profile on our website!
Note that on GitHub (but also when writing research articles), we write in markdown, which is a set of conventions allowing to quickly and easily format text (e.g., text in bold, italic, titles, etc.).
- Create your own first repo
Now, create your first repository! You can leave it mostly empty for now, it's just an experiment ground
- Make a PR in this document here
Now that you have a better idea of GitHub, time to create a PR to add something to the Onboarding repository (this one). You can for example:
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Fix a typo in this document
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Add some recommended good movies/reads
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Clarify some sections
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...
We mostly use Python for signal processing and setting up experimental tasks. For instance, the NeuroKit2 project that we are working on is written in Python. We also build our experimental tasks using Neuropsydia.py which is also a Python module.
Therefore, it's important that you get familiar with the tool. Following are a few resources that we suggest to get you started:
The bulk of our statistical analyses and manuscript preparation is done on R.
At this point, you might ask why can't we just stick to one programming language? What is the point of learning both R and Python? The simple answer is that the two programming languages are basically different and one can be more powerful in one task than the other. This blog post (R or Python for Psychologists) will however give you a much more interesting answer to the above question.\
Following are a few resources to get you started with R:
We encourage you to really explore and be integrated within the online scientific community along with us, as this will help you expand your knowledge and skillset as well as become better informed! It may be a steep learning curve initially, but we're here to help you along the way (we've been there ourselves!) and never hesitate to ask questions 😉