The weekly lab meeting is a central part of the Dada Lab’s training and communication structure. We reserve 90-120 minutes each week for the full team to maintain shared awareness of lab activities, discuss progress and barriers, engage deeply with scientific questions, and develop the intellectual and professional skills needed for successful scientific careers. This meeting is not simply a venue for updates. It is a recurring space for coordination, accountability, critical thinking, scientific exchange, and professional formation.

Purpose of our weekly lab meetings

The weekly meeting is intended to:

• maintain awareness of relevant institutional and lab-level developments
• coordinate shared work, timelines, resources, and responsibilities
• create a regular opportunity to identify barriers and troubleshoot before problems become more difficult to address
• help lab members communicate their work clearly and receive constructive feedback
• build the habit of engaging critically with scientific evidence, reasoning, and interpretation
• provide an intentional, cumulative professional-development curriculum aligned with the lab’s annual strategic goals All lab members are expected to prioritize attendance and active participation. Unavoidable conflicts should be communicated in advance whenever possible.

Part I: Lab coordination and roundtable

The first portion of the meeting is dedicated to maintaining shared awareness, orienting the group to current priorities, and supporting timely communication across the lab. It generally includes:

• Welcome and brief check-ins. We begin by coming together as a team and briefly orienting to the week. Check-ins do not require personal disclosure. They help establish presence, identify immediate constraints when relevant, and reinforce that science is carried out by people working within real professional and personal contexts.
  
• High-level updates. Updates may include relevant institutional, funding, administrative, facility, safety, personnel, or lab-level information. This portion of the meeting helps ensure that members understand the broader environment in which the lab operates and are aware of upcoming deadlines, changes, opportunities, or shared needs.
  
• Agenda, meeting focus, and expectations. The meeting agenda identifies the planned focus for the scientific or professional-development portion of the session, clarifies preparation expectations, and notes decisions or discussions requiring particular attention.
  
• Roundtable. Each lab member provides a concise update on their work. The purpose of roundtable is not to present only polished successes. It is to make progress, questions, and emerging barriers visible; support accountability; and allow the team to coordinate effectively. Our roundtable focuses on work-related information that may affect progress, timelines, shared resources, or coordination. When raising a barrier, uncertainty, or concern, lab members should briefly identify:
  • the relevant context or observed issue
  • what they have already tried, reviewed, or considered
  • the likely impact on the work, and
  • the specific decision, input, or next step needed This keeps discussion oriented toward clarification, coordination, and problem-solving. Concerns should be raised early, but matters requiring extended troubleshooting, confidential discussion, or a broader decision should be scheduled for one-on-one meetings rather than brought up to be resolved during the roundtable.

To preserve time for the full meeting agenda, roundtable updates should ordinarily be brief, generally no more than three to five minutes per person.

Roundtable updates should generally address:

• what was completed or learned since the previous meeting
• immediate priorities or planned work for the week
• barriers, uncertainties, or troubleshooting needs
• decisions or feedback needed from the group or Nsa
• relevant shared-resource, scheduling, sample, colony, equipment, or collaboration needs

Research rarely proceeds exactly as planned. Questions, unexpected outcomes, mistakes, constraints, and failures are normal components of scientific work. They should be raised early enough for the lab to respond constructively.

Matters raised during the roundtable that require longer or more focused discussion may be assigned a follow-up action, owner, and timeline. This protects the scientific and professional-development portion of the meeting while ensuring that important issues are not lost.

Part II: Scientific discussion and professional development

The second portion of the meeting is reserved for focused scientific discussion or professional development. Depending on the week, this may take the form of:

• a journal club based on assigned reading; we take turns choosing. However, Nsa may assign newly published papers or papers that are pertinent to ongoing experiments for broader dicussion
• a lab-member research presentation
• discussion of a research method, analytic approach, or conceptual problem
• practice for a poster, seminar, qualifying exam, proposal, or other presentation, or
• a structured discussion of a professional-development topic This portion of the meeting is informed by the Oxford tutorial approach. Lab members are expected to prepare in advance, engage seriously with the assigned material or topic, articulate their reasoning, ask thoughtful questions, and revise their views when the evidence or logic warrants it.

The goal is not passive exposure to information and not simply sharing opinions. The goal is to practice the disciplined reasoning expected of scientists.

Our tutorial-style discussion model

Our scientific and professional development discussions are grounded in evidence-based, logically structured reasoning. We work to distinguish between a claim, the evidence offered in support of that claim, and the reasoning used to connect the two. A useful framework for evaluating a paper, scientific idea, project decision, or professional issue includes asking:

1. What is the central question or problem?
2. What claim, conclusion, or recommendation is being made?
3. What evidence is offered in support?
4. Does the evidence adequately support the conclusion? What inference connects the evidence to the claim?
5. What assumptions, limitations, confounders, or alternative explanations should be considered?
6. What information, experiment, analysis, or action would strengthen, challenge, or refine the conclusion? This framework applies beyond journal articles. It can be used to evaluate experimental designs, preliminary data, project decisions, professional dilemmas, institutional practices, and mental models that may guide how we approach our work.

The expectation is that we all engage critically but constructively. We challenge ideas, interpretations, evidence, and reasoning; we do not attack people. Disagreement is a normal and productive part of scientific discussion when it is grounded in evidence, logic, and mutual respect.

Professional development themes

Professional development in the Dada Lab is intentional and cumulative. Discussion topics for the second half of the weekly meeting may be organized around annual strategic goals for the lab and its members. For example, some themes we have discussed or are discussing include;

• professionalism
• good lab citizenship
• understanding different lab roles and how they support one another
• decision-making frameworks and mental models, including useful “razors” for clarifying complex problems Other these that we could cover/rotate include scientific reasoning, data stewardship, writing, presentation, career development, or other areas identified as important for the lab’s collective growth.

Participation expectations

The quality of the weekly meeting depends on collective preparation and engagement. Lab members are expected to:

• complete assigned reading or preparation before the meeting
• arrive ready to contribute substantively to discussion
• ask questions when something is unclear or unsupported
• provide feedback that is specific, respectful, and useful
• listen actively and make room for others to contribute
• communicate barriers, or resource needs early, and
• treat discussion as an opportunity to develop stronger reasoning, not merely to demonstrate what one already knows

The weekly meeting is one of the main ways we build continuity in the lab. It helps preserve shared knowledge, ensures that work does not become isolated within individuals, and creates a record of how the lab thinks, learns, adapts, and moves forward together.