Lab budget on its journey through fiscal years.

An unknown groupleader facing annual reporting tasks during the last week of December.

A periodic report was submitted on time ...

... and selected for a thorough review.

This is a repeated reminder that ...

Lab members are finishing their experiments and leaving for Christmas hollidays.

A PI having a quiet moment to think about his future research.

A PI in functional genomics receiving advice from a computational chemist on how he should organize his research, make it more cost-effective and produce more papers.

A PI decided in the last moment not to argue with the advisory board about lack of focus in his research outlook for the next period.

A PI passed his periodic evaluation despite it did not go as well as planned.

For the next year, the institutional overhead will be raised from 20 to 25%.

A PI looking for emerging threats for his lab.

A PI in the coronavirus research field in 2019.

A PI in the coronavirus research field in 2020.

A PI decided to change his main model organism ...

... and started research on a new one ...

... unfortunately, he was not the only one who got the same idea ...

A PI facing 2020 issues ...

... worrying a bit what will come in 2021.

A PI who just received ERC funding ...

A PI who just received a letter starting: "We regret to inform you that ..."

A PI who just received a letter starting: "We regret to inform you that ..." frantically trying to secure funding for an open postdoc position.

A PI who secured an open postdoc position despite receiving a letter starting "We regret to inform you that ..."

A PI who secured an open postdoc position despite receiving a letter starting "We regret to inform you that ..." is announcing the open position on Twitter.

A PI who secured an open postdoc position despite receiving a letter starting "We regret to inform you that ..." and announced the open position on Twitter is looking for outstanding applications.

A PI who secured an open postdoc position despite receiving a letter starting "We regret to inform you that ..." and announced the open position on Twitter just received the first application for the position.

A PI who secured an open postdoc position despite receiving a letter starting "We regret to inform you that ..." and announced the open position on Twitter having a business lunch with the first candidate.

A PI who secured an open postdoc position despite receiving a letter starting "We regret to inform you that ..." and announced the open position on Twitter having a business lunch with the second candidate.

A PI who secured an open postdoc position despite receiving a letter starting "We regret to inform you that ..." and announced the open position on Twitter having a business lunch with the third candidate.

A PI who secured an open postdoc position despite receiving a letter starting "We regret to inform you that ..." and announced the open position on Twitter having a business lunch with the fourth candidate.

A PI who secured an open postdoc position despite receiving a letter starting "We regret to inform you that ..." and announced the open position on Twitter having a business lunch with the fifth candidate.

A PI who secured an open postdoc position despite receiving a letter starting "We regret to inform you that ..." and announced the open position on Twitter offers a position to a successful candidate.

A PI who secured an open postdoc position despite receiving a letter starting "We regret to inform you that ...", announced the open position on Twitter and offered the position to an able candidate has filled the position.

A new postdoc is starting a new project.

It's easy if you know your business.

A PI propperly applying "friendly fire shelter" strategy from the Combat Manual for Fighting Windmills in order to avoid a conflict with administration.

Generally, the Combat Manual for Fighting Windmills suggests that direct escalated conflicts with administration should be avoided.

The Combat Manual for Fighting Windmills recommends that when calculating a cost of a conflict, one should assume that attacking one administrator could be preceived as an attack on all of them.

The Combat Manual for Fighting Windmills states that a verbal argument with administration is a sure way to an escalated conflict.

The Combat Manual for Fighting Windmills states that administration is an unavoidable fact of life and so are conflicts. One has to learn to live with the two.

Do you remember the first slide - a budget passing through fiscal years? It just jumps over a period when orders stop at the end of a year and start again. This is a PI successfully securing the lab budget through grants in a long term.

This is a PI writing annual grant reports that must be approved by a funding body, otherwise the grant support is terminated.

This is a PI periodically renewing his crew as PhD students graduate and postdocs finish and leave.

This is a junior PI facing new responsibilites he was not aware of as a postdoc. Applies to PI women as well.

A scientist successfully making critical career decisions.

... in case somoeone would wonder how a big investment into a wrong career decision might look like ...

Impact of a grant rejection on the lab budget is significant when another grant is ending. This phenomenon is called "funding gap" causes pain, which frequently lasts 12 months. Sometimes 24 months. I know a PI who managed to withstand it for 36 months. It hurts to imagine it.

A PI recovering from a funding gap caused by grant rejection.

A PI in life sciences needs a number of permits & trainings to clear the path for research. Here is a PI who holds a certificate to work with animals completing his training for animal transport to be able to transport mice around & abroad. It's valid for transporting horses too.

This is a PI who has a permit for animal work applying for a permit for doing experiments on animals. Each project using lab animals must be registered and approved. No license to kill at will. This doesn't apply to PIs committing Drosophila and C. elegans genocides ...

... consequently, the administrative path for PIs doing Drosophila or C. elegans research is considerably less obstructed.

Four seasons of academia:

Grant writing
Teaching
Researching
Reporting

A PI with a high teaching load.

A PI trying to help a colleague PI who got overwhelmed with teaching duties.

Here is a senior PI who just skillfully avoided a teaching commitment for the next semester.

And here we can observe recruitment of an unlucky junior PI who will replace a senior PI who skillfully avoided a teaching commitment.

RESEARCH PAPER - Title

RESEARCH PAPER - Abstract

RESEARCH PAPER - Introduction

RESEARCH PAPER - Material & Methods

RESEARCH PAPER - Results

RESEARCH PAPER - Discussion

RESEARCH PAPER - Acknowledgement

RESEARCH PAPER - References

RESEARCH PAPER - Supplementary Methods

Scientists in life sciences open and read Roche Biochemical Pathways when they get bored or lonely.
http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1 

Reviewer 3 demonstrating the art of paper reviewing to a young PI.

A junior PI accepting his first request from an editor to review a manuscript.

A junior PI is working hard on his first peer review task.

A junior PI who submitted his first review and realized that peer-review is not financially rewarded.

A senior PI facing a request from an editor to review a manuscript during the Christmas break.

Reviewer 3 during anonymous review requesting an additional experiment.

Reviewer 1 and Reviewer 2 comments are easier to handle.

Dear editor, we performed an additional experiment proposed by Reviewer 3 and revised the manuscript as requested.

A junior PI realizing he accepted an editorial board position in a predatory journal.

A scientist who posted on Twitter: "C. elegans. They wiggle forward. They wiggle backwards. And occasionally they fuck themselves. That's it."

Offended C. elegans researchers bring up strengths of their model system and demand an apology.

A researcher working on another model system observes a quarrel over the wiggling model system.

A failed attempt to apologize for a joke about the wiggling model system. It seems it derailed at the moment it was called "the wiggling system".

Admitting that Andy Fire and Craig Mello totally deserved the 2006 Nobel Prize for their work on C. elegans would not fix the hurt feelings entirely.

For bringing the conflict to an end, the offender must wiggle himself in public to show that his apology is honest.

Then acknowledging Sidney Brenner and his brilliant idea to use C. elegans as a model system finally brings a truce.

One should not get a wrong impression from an isolated case. When it comes to grants for broad collaborative projects, C. elegans, Drosophila and mouse folks can be supportive and caring about each other's model system.

Unfortunately, not all model systems can be integrated into every broad collaborative project. For example, S. cerevisiae folks are typically not invited into collaborative projects on small RNAs.