The SoNIC Lab strives to be a welcoming and inclusive space for all of its members, collaborators, participants, and guests. We are all passionate about doing creative, rigorous, groundbreaking science, and fulfilling our scientific potential involves respecting and supporting each other’s diverse interests, backgrounds, strengths, and limitations. We commit to giving each other constructive feedback that targets the work rather than the person, to giving our time to help others improve, to respecting each other through our words, tone, and actions, to communicating when we’re struggling, to anticipating challenges throughout the scientific process and being open to learning from them. We also commit to working to make the lab more inclusive by regularly discussing anti-racist literature, creating safe spaces for our LGBTQ+ members, participating in diverse conferences and talk series, and enacting more equitable citation practices.

You may download our public lab handbook here, which includes more detailed items like our code of conduct, expectations, tips for career advancement at different stages, and guidelines for conducting reproducible, equitable, and inclusive science. 

Elise has been the faculty advisor/co-chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee of the Brain & Cognitive Sciences Department since spring 2021; you can read about our work and access many resources here: http://www.sas.rochester.edu/bcs/diversity/index.html.