It is every budding scientist’s dream scenario:  start-up money to spend, tons of ideas to test, and an empty lab waiting to fill up.  But before rushing to stockpile reagents and bring in warm bodies, new academics need to realize that those first additions can set the tone of their lab for years to come.

In particular, a lab’s initial recruits could prove to either be its greatest asset or its biggest time sink, said Dana Pe’er, Ph.D., a 2006 recipient of a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface (CASI). When Pe’er was faced with her own space to fill, she took her time, waiting nearly eight months before accepting her first recruit. Today she has a laboratory full of 14 exceptional individuals.

“I have had a couple of scientific achievements since I was a faculty member, but I am far more proud of myself for the lab I built, for the people I have brought on, for how much they have grown and developed, and just for how happy everyone is to be there,” she said.

Pe’er was one of three panelists to lend her perspective on “creating a laboratory culture” at the CASI Summer Meeting on June 16, 2011. She, Jerry Strauss, M.D., Ph.D., and Rai Winslow, Ph.D., each shared their own principles and practices for setting up an independent, interdisciplinary research group.

As Pe’er explained, it is critical to trust your gut when deciding who would be a good fit for your laboratory. She likes to test potential recruits by giving them papers -- on her own work as well as that of others -- and then engaging them in an intellectual discussion. She also solicits feedback from her current lab members before she officially extends an offer to any newbies.

“I have actually not taken excellent people into my lab because I thought that they had very aggressive personalities that would go against the grain of the very interdisciplinary collaborative lab I have built,” said Pe’er, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Columbia University. “I want to encourage collaboration among members above all else.”

Sometimes, being a good fit for a lab has as much to do with personality as it does knowledge and technical prowess, said Jerry Strauss. Strauss, who is the dean of the school of medicine at the Virginia Commonwealth University and a BWF Board member, says that behavioral interviews are now part of the admissions process for both medical school and graduate school at the school.

“Unfortunately, you do have to be on the lookout for behavioral and mental health issues,” said Strauss. “We are putting people in stressful environments, there is a substrate there that is perhaps primed to decompensate in a stressful environment, so you want to know about that ahead of time. These students can be time sinks and can rip apart the fabric of a laboratory.”

Through a series of questions created by developmental psychologists, VCU interviewers assess potential students’ work ethic, integrity and ability to work within groups. For example, one question presents the following scenario to the candidate: There is a piece of equipment you need for an experiment, but someone else is using it. How do you negotiate the use of that resource? It seems like a simple question, but the responses vary and can give a glimpse into how trainees see themselves fitting within the laboratory or department.

“It is interesting because some people will actually say my experiment is so important, I will turn the machine off and put my samples in,” said Strauss. “That happens in laboratories all the time.”

In Rai Winslow’s 30 years as a researcher, he has learned techniques to deal with such troubling behaviors when they arise. He says it is best to not directly address the behavior, but rather to weave examples of how to behave appropriately into conversations with the student or postdoc.

“It takes time but I think it is a more constructive way to work out a difficulty, because a lot of times they don’t understand it is a problem,” said Winslow, a Raj and Neera Singh Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. “And you don’t want to create a culture where they feel that other people in the lab don’t like them.”

Providing advice on appropriate behaviors is just one way that faculty can help shape their students into productive members of the research enterprise. Winslow said such guidance is extremely important, recalling how he had struggled to find mentorship when he first started out in research. Today, his department specifically assigns junior scientists with mentors who can tell them about funding opportunities, review their grants, nominate them for prizes, and think of other ways to promote their careers.

“At the same time, I think it is important that we set reasonable goals for our trainees so they can get out of the lab with a good experience, because the truth is some students will write six papers and secure positions whereas others won’t,” said Winslow. “When I was new to the game I had high goals for everyone in my lab, demanding that they write a set number of papers and give a set number of talks. As I trained students I have come to the conclusion that not everyone who comes along is going to rise to the top of the academic ladder, but we still have to do as much as we can for them.”

Pe’er also spends a lot of time mentoring her students, and says that her investment is returned several-fold with their training and commitment to her laboratory. She makes notes of areas they need to work on that are holding them back – things like communication skills or a messy lab bench. A few times a year she holds a “jamboree” where the lab works together and learns about a completely new topic for a couple of days. And she also schedules in time for fun – picnics, dinner parties and canoeing trips.

“These fun activities create a good culture because they make people get to know each other on a different level,” said Pe’er. “I think a lot of the success of my lab is the fact that they are a culture of people who respect each other, help each other quite selflessly and are just are happy to be there. And if they’re happy, I’m happy.”

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For extensive advice on how to staff a lab, visit the Staffing the Lab career development guide published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.