My supervisory style tends to be relatively involved, though this does wax and wane depending on how busy the semester gets. But overall, on a scale of 1 being an uninvolved advisor whom you can never get a hold of to 10 being a helicopter advisor who scrutinises and watches over your every tiny move, I’d say I’m somewhere around a 6 to 7. I do adjust this downwards as you become more skilled and experienced in research. But generally, if you want to be completely left alone with total autonomy, I’m not the right supervisor for you. If you need an advisor who closely monitors and dictates every single thing you do, I am also not the right supervisor for you.

I tend to give close supervision and guidance, and I do not shy away from giving constructive negative feedback. Be prepared to have detailed meetings with me and to receive very lengthy emails detailing my thoughts, suggestions, ideas, and my excitement on research (as you can probably tell from my write-up on this page, I am long-winded!). Be prepared that I may ask you to revise and improve your drafts multiple times, which can be a very demanding process, but is an inescapable and necessary one.

It is never pleasant to receive negative feedback, and I completely empathise with how demoralising it can be to submit your work to your advisor, only to receive giant chunks of negative feedback and to be asked to redo many parts of it, often multiple times. It can be exhausting and draining! Unfortunately, it is necessary. I assure you, however, that even though my feedback does often include negatives and can be lengthy and detailed, it is always constructive and always aimed at helping you to pursue the betterment of your work and your skills.

I also expect all members of the lab to make an effort to be meticulous and punctual with their work. Errors in research can be extremely costly—a mis-code during data cleaning could invalidate hours upon hours of work that follows. A technical error when setting up a survey could, at worst, invalidate an entire semester’s worth of data collection if not caught early. We thus need to take special care to check our work carefully and fix the inevitable mistakes early on.

I also appreciate responsiveness and punctuality. To clarify, I’m open to flexibility and negotiation in deadlines, and I’d like to assure you that I’m entirely understanding of changes in circumstances that require shifts in deadlines. But as much as possible, I hope all lab members can nevertheless make their best attempt to meet deadlines that are mutually agreed upon. I do very much value open communication, so I am extremely open to hearing your thoughts if you disagree with certain directions I suggest, or if you are facing challenges in your work with me that you’d like me to hear about and to address.

I would like to also transparently note some caveats of working with me: (1) I do not have a physical lab, unfortunately, so I am regrettably unable to offer you the invaluable experience of working in a shared physical space with other lab members; (2) though not completely impossible, physical lab studies are also a challenge to conduct due to space issues; (3) I am a massive introvert so if you’d prefer to work with labs that are extremely social, with parties, social events, and outings regularly, I doubt this lab would offer you that! I am (in my admittedly biased view, at least) reasonably friendly, though, and I am relatively casual in the way I interact with my students, so you generally don’t need to feel intimidated interacting with me. :)

Benefits of working with my lab

Ultimately, I’d like to assure you that although research can be a very challenging and demanding journey, I truly wish to support your learning and growth if you are a part of my lab. I hope that you will be able to gain new research experiences and hone research skills such as research design, scientific writing, and data analysis skills, among others. More tangibly, I hope to also eventually push you towards involvement in publications (this publication was co-written by an undergraduate volunteer, for example) and conferences, though I cannot guarantee these, given that successful publication or conference acceptances are influenced by many factors outside my control. I’m also very open to providing referrals letters for students who have worked directly with me, but I would again like to be transparent in stating that I am only able to do so if you have worked with me closely over some time and have generally met expectations—otherwise, any letter I write would be unlikely to be substantive and helpful for you. I’m also eager to hear about your expectations and hopes for the future too, and to see how my lab can contribute to your goals as well. The bottom line is that I hope working with my lab will be a mutually beneficial arrangement for yourself as well as my lab!