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Lab Guide › Professional Development

Leaving the lab

The steps to wrap up and hand off your work when you graduate or move on.

When you graduate or move on, the goal is simple: leave your work findable, reproducible, and easy for the next person to pick up. Start about a month before you go. Everyone follows the core steps below; graduate students have a few extra around the thesis.

Archive your data

  • Create a folder with your name in the BIRD Lab Box folder, under the People folder for your role, and upload everything you created or gathered for the projects you worked on.
  • Organize it clearly. If you worked on more than one project, give each its own folder under your name.
  • Add a README (.txt, .md, or .docx) explaining what the data is and how to use it. Letting others know what you uploaded and how to use it matters as much as the data itself.
  • Confirm any GitHub repository lives in the UC-BIRD-Lab organization with an up-to-date README, and note it in your data README (see Code).
  • Complete the project hand-off workflow for each project (linked in the member portal).
  • Transfer ownership of shared Box, Google Drive, and Notion documents to Christina, and confirm who owns what after you go.

Clean up and return property

Clear your desk or bench and return any borrowed lab property, including your office key and any external hard drive.

Share what you learned

Add a section to Tips & Tricks in the member portal to pass on what you wish you’d known.

Move to alumni

  • Ask to be moved from Current Lab Members to Alumni in the member portal. We’ll switch your team-page entry to alumni too, so keep your contact info current.
  • Your Slack and GitHub-organization access will move to alumni status.
  • You’re always welcome back at journal club and lab events.

Graduate students: thesis & handoff

  • File your thesis or dissertation.
  • Use the lab’s LaTeX thesis template (in the member portal), and confirm it still meets UC Davis’s current formatting requirements.
  • Settle authorship and who will carry any unfinished manuscripts forward (see Writing papers).

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