3  Welcome to the Global Change Research Group!

There are a few items to take care of now that you have joined the lab.

3.1 To Do List

  1. Read the Lab Working Agreement.
  2. If you’re a PhD student, check out Malin’s Notes on a PhD Degree (also has some useful postdoc-related resources)
  3. Read the Lab Data Management Policy.
  4. Make a GitHub account if you don’t have one already.
  5. Ask Roy to help you join our Google Spaces (General, Science Communication, DEIB, Climate Biogeography, Genomics, Random, Lab Meeting, Santa Cruz, Computing & Data, Conferences, Lab Website, Lab Space, and Help Coding) for messaging (a Slack equivalent), our shared google calendar, our Github Organization, and the GCRG mailing list (pinsky-lab@googlegroups.com) (talk to Roy Roberts).
  6. Connect to the Global Change Research Group Shared Google Drive by asking Roy to share it with you.
  7. Add your information to the GCRG Members google document (in the GCRG Google Drive folder)/
  8. Send your contact information, photo, and web address to Roy to add to our lab webpage here. If you don’t have webpage, they can help you make a page on our website.
  9. Write an Independent Development Plan, copy your IDP goals to a new google document in Shared Drive/How_we_work/Group_member_goals/ (see the template in the directory), share it with Malin, and set up a time to discuss it.
  10. If you will be doing lab work, complete the safety training here.
  11. Get your keys and ID card through UCSC (talk with the EEB Grad Program Coordinator and/or the EEB Assistant Administrator). Add CBB 139 for the GCRG Molecular lab, a ley for the CBB analytical labs if you’re doing pop gen lab work, and a key for the CBB showers if you want.
  12. If you’re at UCSC, also check out the EEB resource guide
  13. Download and begin to maintain a reference manager. We recommend Zotero, as the free software interfaces well with both Microsoft Word and Google Docs. Download Zotero and browser plugin here.
  14. Block out our weekly lab meeting time on your calendar, and when you’re ready, sign up for a lab meeting. The easiest way to find the schedule for lab meetings is to look at the GCRG Lab Meeting space under Tasks and the linked google file should pop up.
  15. If you’re a postdoc, grad student, or staff, talk to Malin if you need an external monitor, harddrive for backups, or external keyboard or trackpad. We can usually provide what you need (funding-dependent).
  16. Read through the relevant guides and tutorials below, depending on your experience.
  17. Join the CBB Coffee Club (2nd floor kitchen) if that’s relevant to you.
  18. Spend some time exploring the resources on the GCRG Google Drive and Github Organization. Ask questions about anything that’s confusing so that we can make it easier for others in the future!

3.2 Computing Resources

There are several computing resources available to serve your research computing needs.

Rutgers

owner name partition name number of cores memory
SEBS annotate2 - 112 + 8200 GPU 1T
SEBS annotate-win - 18 500G
OARC-Pinsky node 1 (hal0181) amarel p_mlp195 40 192G
OARC-Pinsky node 2 (hal0186) amarel p_mlp195 40 192G
OARC-Ecology node 1 (hal0280) amarel p_deenr_1 64 256G
OARC-Ecology node 2 (hal0281) amarel p_deenr_1 64 256G
OARC-EOAS node (hal0170) amarel p_eoas_1 40 192G
OARC amarel main ~19,000 ?
RDII caliburn - 256 768G

UCSC

owner name partition name number of cores memory
PBSci Hummingbird - 24-64/node up to 256GB/node
Astrophysics Lux - many less
PBSci Bishop [archived data] GlobalChange-bio/ [10TB] NA NA

Various lab members have differing levels of experience with each of these servers and can help you figure out what is best for your analysis. Amarel is a condo system. You only have to wait in line with other GCRG folks for the Pinsky node, you have to wait in line with other Ecology folks for the DEENR node, you have to wait in line with all of Rutgers folks for the other nodes.

3.3 University Affiliated Listservs

UCSC

Name Listserv email Contact Name Contact email
Global Change Research Group pinsky-lab@googlegroups.com Ryan Snow
Inst. for Marine Science allmarsci@ucsc.edu
EEB general announcements eebmemo@ucsc.edu Eve Chudnow echudnow@ucsc.edu
Fisheries Collaborative Program fcp-group@ucsc.edu Liane Bauer lybauer@ucsc.edu
  • Visit here for the full list of Rutgers Marine-related listservs
  • Visit here for a broad list of Rutgers listservs

3.4 Guides and tutorials

  1. Research practice
  2. Career development and time management
    • The NCFDD has very good advice on time management, developmenta, and more. Activate your account through UCSC here, including resources for graduate students.
    • Our internal guide to career exploration through informational interviews here
  3. Command line tutorial and more help with the command line (Udacity)
  4. R
    1. Installing R and RStudio
    2. Learn R with swirl
    3. R For Data Science (a very useful introduction to R)
  5. Git and GitHub
    1. Udacity Git and GitHub tutorial
    2. Happy Git with R tutorial (outside tutorial)
  6. Field work
  7. Resources for scientific writing
  8. Data visualization resources
    • Tufte books
    • William Cleveland, The Elements of Graphing Data
  9. Scientific presentation tips
    • http://blog.ted.com/10-tips-for-better-slide-decks/
    • How Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes (booklet in the lab)
    • Will Ratcliffe: https://twitter.com/wc_ratcliff/status/949315012472070145
    • Clip art
      • http://ian.umces.edu/symbols/
      • https://thenounproject.com/
    • https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00832-5
    • Remember you’re telling a story
      • Start where your audience is, explain why it matters/they should care
      • build suspense, and then resolve it
    • Build with simple pieces
      • You know much more than your audience. Recognize they can only absorb information so fast.
      • Layer in points and pieces as you say them
      • Explain all parts of a figure
    • Less is more
      • Few words, more pictures. Slides uncluttered
      • Less talking: say it clearly and move on
    • Practice, practice, practice
  10. Networking and collaboration skills