Welcome to Nowhere Lab!

 

We are Nowhere Lab. Anyone from any field is welcome to join who doesn't have a lab but would like the lab meeting experience. Target audience includes but is absolutely not limited to:

• New faculty who have no one in their lab yet
• Ex-academics who now work in industry
• Freelance sci-commers/consultants
• People who are in a toxic lab
• People between jobs
• Keen undergrads

*To join, email priyasilverstein at gmail.com

Origin story

Nowhere Lab was started in 2020 as an online lab community. When Priya moved from a traditional lab-based postdoc to two alt-ac (alternative academia) roles, they missed having a lab community, and thought others might feel the same. Nowhere Lab now has over 200 members, so clearly others did!

Our name is inspired by the Beatles song Nowhere Man. From the film Yellow Submarine, the song refers to the character Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD. a self-described "eminent physicist, polyglot classicist, prize-winning botanist, hard-biting satirist, talented pianist, good dentist too". Reviewing his own works, he states "it's (his own) policy to never read them". Jeremy is always busy with multiple projects: “so little time, so much to know”!

You can read more about Nowhere Lab in this Educator’s Corner post for FORRT (a Nowhere Lab partner).

Weekly meetings

We hold weekly meetings that change time every 3 months to attempt to accommodate members in different time zones. Oct-Dec 2024 meetings are held every Friday at 3.30-4.30pm (UK) and last approximately 1 hour but are sometimes slightly longer (you're welcome to leave whenever you need to). You can check out our calendar here to see what we’re up to each week!

Slack channel

We have a Slack channel which is the base for our community -- somewhere members can interact even if they're unable to attend meetings. Here we share resources, memes, support, and more.