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KLab Culture & Shared Expectations
KLab Culture & Shared Expectations
At the Kamaleswaran Lab for Biomedical Data Science (KLab) at Duke University, our collaboration is a collective symphony of inspiration, scientific rigor and innovation. Guiding a highly interdisciplinary and translational research lab is a great honor, and we recognize the immense responsibility to ensure the success, growth, and well-being of every team member.
The guidelines below illustrate the overall management and mentoring style of the lab. While individual interactions vary, these shared expectations serve as the foundation for our collaboration and our pursuit of advancing data science in medicine.
1. Culture & Belonging
1. Culture & Belonging
The lifeblood of our research is peer mentorship and the continuous exchange of ideas. We operate under the philosophy that we stand on each other's shoulders, and knowledge should cascade across all levels of experience within the lab.
Supportive Environment: We collectively share a deep commitment to fostering a supportive and inclusive academic community. Disrespectful behavior will not find a place within our group. We aim to create a culture where every member feels they belong and where open and transparent discussions on these values are encouraged.
Passion for Discovery: Our expectation is not just for you to become a good researcher, but to ignite a lifelong passion for discovery. We encourage members to immerse themselves in the ocean of knowledge, throwing away horse tacks to take broad views of critical challenges to human health and well-being.
Outcomes Over Hours: We value dedication and high-level work. However, we adopt a work culture that values outcomes over counting days, recognizing that rigid constraints can hinder creativity. Sustained progress requires significant dedication, but team members are empowered to manage their time effectively to meet their academic goals.
Cascading Knowledge: You will absorb a immense amount of knowledge in your first year. As you progress, you are expected to increasingly pay it forward by actively teaching and mentoring junior lab members.
Presence and Contribution: Even if your formal coursework is complete, maintaining a regular presence in the lab is crucial so you can contribute to the upcoming cohorts. We encourage maximizing daytime overlap to foster collaboration, reduce isolation, and ensure rapid, team-based problem-solving.
Collective Problem-Solving: We hold ongoing weekly group meetings dedicated to collective discussions, idea-sharing, and collaborative problem-solving. Active participation is expected, as this is where co-learning happens most dynamically.
Shared Resources: Maintaining accurate, complete, and up-to-date records, alongside clean, well-documented code, is a core expectation. This ensures that your work can be easily shared, understood, and built upon by the rest of the team.
2. Mentorship, Communication & Correspondence
2. Mentorship, Communication & Correspondence
Mutual Respect: The mentor-mentee relationship is dynamic and must be approached with a deep sense of humility, dignity, respect, and trust. Our intention is that the bonds formed here endure a lifetime, providing both academic and relational strengths.
Open Communication: Timely and continued communication is the linchpin of our collaborative efforts. We maintain an open-door policy, conduct regular one-on-one meetings to discuss research progress, and hold weekly group meetings to encourage collective discussions, idea-sharing, and collaborative problem-solving.
Team Collaboration: We encourage maximizing daytime overlap with colleagues to foster collaboration, reduce isolation, and enhance team dynamics.
Timely Correspondence: Most emails should be answered within 24 hours of receiving them. Communication is the most important aspect of research, and communicating roadblocks and timelines to the people who depend on your work is essential.
Messaging Boundaries: Please do not use chat, text, or instant messaging to cold-call external colleagues or collaborators until they have responded via email and indicated that such communication is acceptable.
Social Media: Do not post information about our research or lab activities on social media or public forums without clearing it first. Unauthorized posting could cause issues with intellectual property, funding, contracts, or future publications.
3. Ethics, Integrity, and Disclosures
3. Ethics, Integrity, and Disclosures
Because our research operates at the intersection of artificial intelligence, translational medicine, and high-stakes critical care environments, maintaining absolute transparency and unwavering ethical rigor is non-negotiable.
Research Integrity: We uphold the highest standards of research integrity, including ensuring reproducibility, using good practices in experimental design, code generation, and data analysis. Group members must maintain integrity at all times, including candidly sharing results regardless of whether they fit an anticipated outcome.
External Engagements and Disclosures: We adhere to a strict policy regarding external professional activities: oversharing is always better than withholding. If you are considering external consulting, involvement in a commercial venture, advisory roles, or initiating independent academic collaborations outside of our established institutional partnerships, you must disclose these activities early.
Source Code and Open-Source Policies: Please do not post any code related to our research in a public repository early on. Code should remain private in the lab repository until multiple people have reviewed it and it has been formally signed off on.
Algorithmic Plagiarism: Plagiarism includes algorithms and computer code, even if you are translating them into another language. While standard algorithms may not require a citation, the specific implementation always requires credit so it can be benchmarked and tracked for bugs.
Protecting Team Science: Early disclosure ensures we proactively manage any potential Conflicts of Interest (COI) or Conflicts of Commitment. This protects your professional reputation, safeguards the integrity of our team's research, and prevents overlapping commitments between quantitative methodology experts, clinical practitioners, and institutional leadership.
4. Authorship, Intellectual Property & Commercialization
4. Authorship, Intellectual Property & Commercialization
Authorship: Credit is assigned based on substantial intellectual and creative contributions, with the order of authorship determined by the significance of these contributions. We aim to communicate this transparently at the start of projects to avoid conflict.
Publication Timelines: You must pass all potential publications to me before submitting them to a journal, workshop, or conference, or presenting them in public. Authorship lists should be resolved at least three weeks in advance of any deadline to give all authors a chance to review the work and check for errors.
Lab-Generated Intellectual Property: Ideas conceptualized as part of your training, developed using lab resources, or seeded through our collaborative discussions belong to the lab's collective intellectual portfolio. Taking these internal concepts and unilaterally spinning them off into independent personal ventures creates severe conflicts of interest, breaches trust, disrupts external collaborations and jeopardizes our ongoing research aims.
Collaborative Commercialization & Spin-Offs: We are highly supportive of translating our research into the real world. Creating spin-offs to provide meaningful value to the healthcare industry is a key objective for our group as we look to build translational products. If you recognize the commercial potential in our hardware or software developments, bring it to the team. We actively encourage entrepreneurship, but these activities must occur within the context of our broader lab research. We will work together to build a robust patent portfolio and navigate the institutional technology transfer process as a unified front within the context of our obligations to our sponsors and collaborators.
Intellectual Property (IP): We respect the principles of inventorship. Anyone who conceives the subject matter of a claim in a patent is an inventor, and we will provide guidance on navigating the IP landscape in accordance with university policies.
5. Letters of Recommendation
5. Letters of Recommendation
I am deeply committed to supporting your transition into independent leadership roles, however note that I only provide letters to those who I have worked with on a substansive basis, please do not be offended if I decline to provide letters on short-term interactions. For those with long-term engagements, to ensure I can provide the strongest possible reference, please follow this process:
Advance Notice: Email me at least 4 weeks in advance to ask if I can provide a reference.
Provide Context: Include a short synopsis of the position alongside a web link to the opportunity.
Draft Letter: Provide a draft letter indicating our relationship, how long we have worked together, specifically what you did, and concrete examples of your results and impact.
Waiver: Please note that you must waive your right to access the reference I write for you.
6. Advancing Team Science
6. Advancing Team Science
By committing to these shared expectations, we ensure that our pursuit of team science remains rigorous, transparent, and profoundly impactful. Developing robust clinical intelligence systems and multimodal foundation models for high-stakes environments, requires more than just technical brilliance. It demands deep, interdisciplinary trust between quantitative methodology experts, clinical practitioners, and institutional leadership.
Ultimately, these guidelines are not meant to be restrictive; they are the architectural blueprint for your academic and professional destiny. By fostering a culture of co-learning, proactive communication, and ethical innovation, we will push the boundaries of biomedical informatics and build solutions that redefine critical care medicine.
7. Resources & Conflict Resolution
7. Resources & Conflict Resolution
If unresolved disputes or disagreements persist regarding these shared expectations, please remember that university resources are always available. You are encouraged to reach out to the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) or the Department Chair of your home department.
For additional support, please refer to the university's official resources: “Reporting Harassment, Discrimination, and Other Concerns: An Interactive Guide for Graduate School Students”
https://projects.gradschool.duke.edu/reporting/
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