As the lab gets up and running we have been talking a lot about lab culture – what makes for a great lab, and what we can do to help ours along. Most published advice is written in management-speak or 70s-style psychobabble (yuck and yuck), but we were pleased to come across the work of systems biologist Uri Alon, who writes and talks incisively about these issues all the time. In addition to his science songs –

– he has some excellent resources on his web page, including some great essays by Cori Bargmann on graduate school culture.