We do rigorous quantitative science to support decision-making for groundwater sustainability and water resources management, more broadly. We conduct our work using Open Data Science principles, emphasizing scientific excellence (not perfection) that is transparent, reproducible, collaborative, and ethical. We aim to make our methods and results available and support ongoing learning.
See the next chapter for more detail on our lab culture and philosophy.
How we meet
Currently, we meet in person in Katie’s office for weekly lab meetings and individual meetings.
We use Sharepoint to set agendas, record decisions made, and outline action items during meetings. Each lab member has their own Sharepoint folder for their 1:1 meetings with Katie. Prior to each meeting, create your agenda for that meeting there.
How we give feedback
Feedback, both giving and receiving it, is an important aspect of our lab. Most of the feedback we give and receive is when giving and attending practice talks. We expect feedback to be supportive but constructive.
This resource from UBC does a really great job of outlining the main points of how to give and receive feedback.
How we share things (and send them to Katie)
We think it is useful to have standard ways of sharing things. These don’t always have to be followed but are a useful guide and will make things easier. When sending material to someone, always make sure to describe what you are sending and try to make it as easy as possible for them to help you.
Taking a project-based approach to organizing your work makes it easier to share and solicit feedback from others, as things tend to be self-contained. Try to keep only 1 working instance of material, and use some form of version control to facilitate this.
Project management tools in Github are a good way to record and document questions on analyses. Use ‘Issues’ on github repositories for project-related tasks and problems. Alternatively, make use of a GoogleDoc for each project to record this history, much like you would a lab notebook.
Code: all could should be hosted in a GitHub repo hosted on the markovich-lab GitHub organization for version-control and ease of sharing. For specific questions on problems, please try to create a minimal reproducible example. Ensure that others can run and interact with the material being shared.
Writing: Preferably via Overleaf or GoogleDoc, but MS Word documents can also be shared. Word documents should always have your last name as the first part of the file name and a version number (e.g., “markovich_thesis_v1.docx”).
We also share our institutional knowledge through our lab-manual Discussions page. This is a community-driven resource for ideas, troubleshooting, etc. Please contribute!
We maintain a lab Sharepoint folder for lab publications, presentations, photos, CVs, etc. Please make use of these so that others in the lab can make fair use of our work.
Shared lab resources
Where to find shared resources:
- Sharepoint - You will be given access to the shared lab folder during onboarding, take a look at the Lab Meetings folder to find Lab Meeting Notes for each semester
- GitHub - markovich-lab is the shared GitHub account for the lab
- lab-manual - This repository contains the lab manual, and the Wiki has the lab meeting schedule.