Welcome!

We revisit our mission statement each year to consider revisions and to reaffirm our commitment to the culture and values this statement reflects. The current lab Mission Statement reads:

• This is a place where scientists come together to share and develop knowledge, skills, and talents.
• We achieve our individual and collective goals while we study neuromodulatory processes in the mammalian cortex – at the receptor, circuit, and systems levels.
• We strive to deploy, if necessary develop, whatever tools we need to answer good questions.
• Where we see a need for connection, we build bridges: between people, theories, domains of knowledge, methodologies, model systems.
• We hold our integrity and ethical standards tightly; our theories and hypotheses lightly.
• We maintain a broad and integrated view of our place in the world at large, and the world of science.
• We commit to acknowledge, value, pay forward, and share openly our resources.
• In all our endeavors we work with respect for each other, for science, for society, and for the environment.
• We devote ourselves to humane and respectful practices that dignify animal and human lives at all stages of our research.

Beyond this mission statement, key elements of our lab philosophy can be gleaned by reading this paper on the importance of stupidity in scientific research, and this paper on the usefulness of useless knowledge.

Updated: August 2022