As manager of the Wilson Lab, I was an information officer of sorts for a 20-member neuroscience research group. Somehow I never got around the re-designing the public website for the lab, but I am responsible for some of the content on the site, most notably the publications section, which involved extensive research to track down online citations for every lab publication going back two decades. I also cleaned up the code on the pages I updated.

Web and IT work were a large portion of my duties, but most of it was on the internal network. I set up and maintained an internal wiki that the lab used for documentation, meeting planning, safety training, ordering supplies and lots of other daily business. I also collected and organized all of the lab’s software, publications, and whitepapers on the intranet, and built a spreadsheet-based internal ordering records and inventory system. Finally, I consulted with lab members in implementing a redundant storage and documentation system for gigabytes of experimental data.

I also acted in a project management capacity, coordinating the application process for NIH grants and fellowships, collecting the relevant information from lab members, assembling and proofing the applications, and liaising with administration and NIH officials to ensure that all requirements were met for each application. In interim periods between applications, I was responsible for budgeting and purchasing for each grant, and for ensuring compliance with the terms of our grants, as well as compliance with institutional, state, and federal drug, safety, and animal care regulations.