👨‍🔬 👩‍🔬 Getting Started

To begin your journey in the Kao lab, here are some guidelines to help you get oriented and integrate smoothly with lab protocols, communication channels, and the lab culture!

Required Trainings

In general, there are strict guidelines for using vertebrate animals in scientific research that aim to minimize the amount of suffering and loss of life to these animals. These guidelines have been developed by different federal agencies over time. Then, each university has what’s called an IACUC committee (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee), whose job it is to ensure that every research on campus follows these guidelines (there is a separate committee, the IRB (Institutional Review Board), that ensures that research on humans is done in an ethical manner). Before any lab can begin a research project involving vertebrates, it has to write and submit a protocol to the IACUC for approval, which details exactly how many animals will be used and justifies that number, what levels of pain they might experience during experiments, and what will happen to them when the experiment is over.

In addition, each researcher (whether PI, grad student, undergrad, etc) needs to go through some form of training before they can be added to a protocol and approved to handle vertebrates. This is again to protect the animals and to ensure that everyone has a basic understanding of the federal guidelines that govern research on animals. The following are required training that a new researcher has to complete:

CITI Training: This includes finishing the following modules available at the CITI program website. The login credentials for the website are your umb credentials. Once logged in, new researchers need to complete the following modules:

  1. Investigators, Staff and Students
  2. RCR for Trainees (undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows)
  3. Working With Zebrafish (Danio rerio) in Research Settings

Occupational Health and Safety Form: Once you complete the CITI training modules you need to sign the Occupational Health and Safety (OEHS) forms available here. This form will certify that you are physically fit to conduct research in the lab. It also informs you of potential hazards with working with fish and in a lab environment in general (e.g., if you are allergic to latex; there is a nonzero chance of disease transmission from fish to humans, although the risk is very low; there will be some chemicals in the lab; we will be using some tools which have sharp edges). You should let Albert know about any potential hazard you want to discuss with him.

Animal Resources Core Facility and Vivarium (ARCF) tour: This is typically arranged with Albert and Elizabeth Boates (Facility Manager) to get a tour of the animal facility and learn about protocols and general plan of things in the animal facility.

IACUC Orientation Training: This is about an hour long training done over Zoom about the IACUC facility. Registration is required to attend this meeting and emails about the next event is usually circulated by Alexa well in advance, so make sure you look out for these. It may not be available at time of hire, but look out for it within one year of being employed.

OEHS Lab Safety Training: This is around a two hour training done over Zoom about general lab safety that needs to be registered for. Again, registration is required to attend this meeting and emails about the next event is usually circulated by Alexa well in advance, so make sure you look out for these. It may not be available at time of hire, but look out for it within one year of being employed.

Lab Communication Channels

Collective Lab Slack Server: This is where most communication happens and is one way to contact anyone or everyone in the lab. the link to join can be found here

Kao Lab Email Listing: This lets people in the lab include you in email conversations and chains to keep you updated on important lab related emails and is another way to contact everyone in the lab.

Kao Lab Google Drive: This provides access to lab related documents such as order forms, fish care sheets, and standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Submitting Working Hours (Undergraduates)

If you are an undergraduate working in the lab you need to submit your work hours to your assigned administrator (Sarah, Clark) on time to get paid. The email should contain the following details:

  1. Subject title should be Lab Hours
  2. CC Albert on the email (albert.kao@umb.edu)
  3. List out your hours for the week
  4. Submit your hours before Thursday 5:00PM