One of my favorite things about the Rutgers University Biomedical Engineering (BME) building is the fact that it has an "open lab environment". In fact, this is one of the main reasons that I chose to attend Rutgers. In case you have never set foot in the BME labs, what I mean by "open lab,” is that all of the lab benches of different professors are in one large room. As you walk down the hall, you pass 20 or so benches and you're able to meet and greet all of the other graduate students and see them as they work on their current experiments.
My appreciation for this building design is far-reaching. First of all, this feature allows you to recognize that you are not alone – both physically and figuratively. You are not the only one in the building who is working late on a Friday night to troubleshoot your latest study that hasn't been working for the past few months. Just knowing that you are not alone is a powerful message to remember during the ever-so-isolating graduate school experience.
Beyond the physical presence of other motivated graduate students, the open lab environment has helped me immensely in forming beneficial collaborations. This starts with something as simple as sharing reagents. For example, take those countless times when you go to reach for a pipette, but someone "forgot" to tell you that they used up the last bag, leaving you pipette-less in the middle of splitting your cells. I'm pretty sure every graduate student working in a wet lab anywhere can relate to a similar scenario. In this case, I know that I can go down the hall and ask at least five other labs if they have pipettes for me to borrow. This sure beats knocking on five individual doors and interrupting that lab's workflow.
Beyond "life-saving" moments like these, collaborations between other labs on the floor reach even deeper. The open lab environment has exposed me to different methods and approaches that other labs use. By using the open lab environment to my advantage and by getting to know students from the other labs on a personal and professional level, I have been able to learn and adapt methods that they regularly use for my own research. As a Biomedical Engineer, I value this opportunity to branch out and expand my set of tools in such a broad field. Furthermore, I believe that this open environment, as compared to the traditional, distinct-lab design, promotes collaboration over competition. Sure, science will always be competitive, as PI's must stand out in order to clench those coveted research grants, but I believe that we are all more productive and innovative, when we emphasize collaboration over competition in our scientific endeavors.
So, thank you BME building designers. Thank you BME professors who played key roles in the design of our current building. Thank you fellow floor-mates for openly sharing your research and helping to improve mine. Thank you for lending me that bag of pipettes.
For those of you not fortunate enough to work in an open lab environment, your job is a little harder. Make it a priority to get to know members of other labs. Talking to fellow researchers is truly valuable, and this small act will potentially enhance your research and even your social life. Both of these are important to grow during your graduate experience. Remember, no one ever finished their PhD on their own. You never know when having that friend down the hall will help you by lending that missing lab reagent, troubleshooting a finicky experiment, or even with finding a job when your grad school journey has come to an end. How has a fellow student from a different PI helped you out in a bind?