Just a reminder that if you’re mulling seminar/conference speakers, these New PIs probably gave some pretty impressive job talks! And the list might even inspire some ideas for manuscript reviewers or guest editors.

Too late to get in trouble for cussing cuz I'm seeing myself out! 👋😉.

It's been a fun take-over today! Thanks for hosting me, and I'll see y'all back home on my own account @Annika_Barber. To sum up my New PI experience so far:.💜 AFB

Of course, the people who really run the Barber lab are the lab members. Lucky for me, I hired Mike, the World's Best Lab Manager, right when I started! Genuinely can't imagine getting to now without him. And of course, we've since grown!

Who really runs the @Annika_Barber lab? Well, I can tell you who *thinks* he runs the lab, and who is also the most popular lab member. That would be Mister Peebles. ~AFB

As a grad student, I thought I needed to meet "important people" at conferences to form a professional network. But I realize now that the most important connections I've made are with peers. And one day soon, we'll be the important people at the conferences! 😆 ~AFB.

The most important lifeline as a NewPI is community. I have been #unironicallyblessed with an amazing community of colleagues from my postdoc lab, friends I made through NewPI Slack, and the incredible Drosophila research community. #flypeoplearethebest.

Do you have a tried-and-true lab tip? Always open to more wisdom (which you can also get by joining @NewPI_Slack of course!).

Recently we've implemented quarterly SMART goal setting. We take a lab meeting each quarter to review the past quarter's progress as a team, and set our writing and experimental goals for the upcoming quarter. Breaking goals into SMART components is challenging, but so helpful!.

Like the best laid plans of all organisms, these plans "gang aft agley. " So we also have annual lab cleanup! In which we not only clean up the lab, but we revisit inventories, protocols, etc. and make sure they are accurate and up-to-date.

When someone implements a new assay, they not only write and submit a protocol to the notebook, they also create a metadata template to fill out for each assay run, and a data management plan for the type of data that will be generated.

Using an electronic lab manual system has been amazing, especially with virtual and shift lab work. We use Evernote, with a dedicated "notebook" for each lab member as well as "protocols and templates" and "inventories" notebooks.

Taking the time to write a lab manual and continually revise it has been helpful to establish lab culture and protocols in Unprecedented Times. The @Annika_Barber lab manual is public at

Do I have definitive advice on starting a lab in a pandemic? Ha! No. But here are some of the things I did that have been useful (I also probably did a lot of dumb stuff). ~AFB.

Q: Sure, *you* love rhythms, but why should *I* care?.A: Even if you don't study circadian rhythms directly, controlling for time-of-day effects can get rid of experimental noise in a wide variety of experiments, whether you measure behavior, physiology or gene expression. ~AFB

And decorate with fly art!

I also like to eat flies.

I enjoy flies both personally and professionally. I like to embroider, and flies are often a subject! ~AFB

By which I mean that Jeff Hall, Mike Young and Michael Rosbash got the prize, of course. 😜 ~AFB.

While circadian rhythms are conserved from cyanobacteria to insects to fish and mammals, flies are the #supermodelorganism of chronobiology! They even got a Nobel Prize for it!

What *is* a circadian rhythm? It's a biological process that repeats about once every 24 hours. There are a few official rules to meet the scientific definition of a rhythm. Rule zero is assumed. (AFB)