Mission Statement

The following is a collection of principles that we follow in our research group. The statement contains values and expectations that were initially derived from discussions at the 2022 lab retreat at the TUM Akademiezentrum Raitenhaslach and updated at the 2023 lab retreat in Owingen and the 2024 lab retreat at Schneefernerhaus (Zugspitze). It is a living document.

Version history

Current version/date: v1.4 | 2 September 2024

Our Mission Statement is versioned on GitHub.

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Inclusive, diverse and collaborative lab culture

We are committed to creating a social environment that is collaborative, friendly, non-judgemental and inclusive. We are a diverse and international team, and our goal is to foster a culture of belonging where we celebrate our differences, learn from each other and grow as scientists and human beings together. We want everyone in our team to feel supported as scientists and individuals, and as such, we model our behaviour as colleagues and mentors to be empowering and to create a working space that is safe and free from any type of harassment and discrimination on the basis of gender, age, class, ethnicity, country of origin, belief, disability or neurodiversity* status. When we witness any of these harassing or discriminating behaviours, we are active bystanders*. We critically reflect our ability to accomplish this, and seek training to upskill.

We also seek to actively widen access to scientific knowledge and academia for people from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds through offering internships in our lab, and contributing to institutional programs designated to this purpose (such as CaCTüS and Girls'Day).

Open scholarship and open science

We are committed to pursuing and advancing open scholarship in research and teaching. This concerns the whole scientific process, including preregistration and publishing. Our goal is to make science transparent and accessible, not only to fellow scientists but extending to students and the general public. We prioritise publishing our scientific publications in open-access outlets. We seek to normalise open science practices in the lab. This includes prioritising version control and documentation for analysis scripts, as they will be made transparent online. We encourage and want to aid replication attempts of our results. We engage with external requests for sharing materials, code and data and offer support.

We strive to work in an open-source ecosystem. This means using preferably non-proprietary, open-source software. Importantly, benefitting from other’s open source software, we also see responsibility in contributing to the software development process to our ability (e.g. reporting issues). Furthermore, we share our data as research outputs.

We organise open and free webinars and share recordings of scientific talks online to make educational resources and insights into scientific progress accessible to a diverse and international audience. In line with this goal, we consider science communication and public outreach part of our scientific mission.

Reproducibility and scientific integrity

Our mission is to perform robust and reproducible research. We achieve this goal through various actions, including documentation of program code and analysis steps, preregistration of experiments, internal replication, and data and code reviews. We establish naming conventions for files and we write standard operating procedures (SOPs) for experiments, data collection and -management, data storage and for analysis. We respect subjects’ privacy, therefore we collect pseudonymized or anonymized data whenever possible.

We want to constrain the “researcher degrees of freedom” in analyses by carefully specifying analytic strategies prior to data analysis. We avoid “research waste” and in the case of negative results, we will publish them. We prioritise quality over quantity in producing the data and in the publication of results. In case of mistakes in already published work, we acknowledge these mistakes and work to correct them.

Sustainability

We commit to sustainability and sustainable research practices built on reducing and reusing. This includes reducing CO2 emissions, reducing waste (paper, food, plastic, ...) and reusing resources. We achieve this by a variety of means:

We aim to share instruments and repair old instruments instead of buying new devices. We encourage reducing (paper, plastic) waste and ask our institutions to switch to digital forms. We aim to make our code efficient and test it, use sustainable computing practices, and share code and data. In the long run, we intend to include sustainability and sustainable research practices in our teaching and aim to work on a sustainability-related topic within our field for 1 out of 5 student projects.

Where possible and feasible, we commit to commuting by foot, bike or public transport and choose local or online conferences over long-distance ones that require flights. We consider the carbon footprint of our activities and consider these prior to deciding whether to attend a conference. We reduce waste in general and paper waste by sharing printed articles and books. At events that we organise, we provide vegetarian catering options and encourage low-carbon travel options.

Commitment to meaningful and societally relevant science

As scientists, we are part of society. We are committed to doing meaningful and societally relevant science. Our focus is on understanding and characterising biological, physiological and psychological phenomena that can benefit and advance society and humanity. One example is conducting studies that inform how to promote and improve human health and wellbeing. We are driven by curiosity and the wish for discovery, with a clear goal for our work to be impactful, and not simply produce statistically significant results. As largely publicly funded scientists, we have a responsibility towards the public.

One way we give back to society is by engaging with the public through a variety of means, such as giving public talks, participating in and organizing science outreach events, developing educational resources, comic books, podcasts, and giving interviews. We seek and create opportunities for the application and translation of our work (such as through the Ladenburg White Paper).

We do not wish to dumb our science down – but rather make it accessible. This includes opening our doors during open days, producing materials and keeping a public presence.

Wellbeing and work-life balance

We acknowledge that working in academia poses threats to well-being and work-life balance. We consider this a major challenge that we address. We are committed to our work without losing sight of our well-being. Accordingly, we value a healthy work-life balance. Employees are allowed to design their own working schedule and can work from home by arrangement. During holiday time, employees are not expected to be involved in work-related matters, including responding to emails and messages. Our team is encouraged to engage in self-care and hobbies in their free time. Moreover, stress-reducing activities, such as yoga, meditation, and/or exercise, are supported during working hours. We encourage people to take sick leave when necessary, including for mental health issues and to protect each other. We actively participate in team events, such as health days and fun runs.

This encompasses a supportive environment among lab members with no discrimination against any physical and/or mental impairments. In addition, constructive feedback is provided to support each other, and conflicts are mediated in an appropriate manner. We are flexible to accommodate people with families and make family-friendly arrangements.