Collaborative Excellence at the Ibrahim Lab

In the Ibrahim Lab, we strive to foster an inclusive environment that centers respect of, access to, and representation of different perspectives and experiences within our team and in our research, with the goal of accelerating scientific discovery to improve the lives of youth with mental health conditions and their families.

To support and accomplish this principle, our current efforts include the following:

• Maintaining a lab community that is supportive and creates the conditions for people to feel safe and encouraged to express diverse perspectives across all lab activities including research, teaching, decision making, and in our work with community participants. We also center the voices of those impacted and represented in our research via active engagement with members of the community.
• Recruiting lab members using a holistic evaluation process that prioritizes individuals’ strengths, areas of training needs, interests and availability for training, and motivation (i.e., over and beyond where and with whom they trained). We also integrate considerations for the expansion of interests, thoughts, and ideas to help us expand our lab conversations and research.
• Working to acknowledge, understand, and repair power imbalances, we engage all our lab members to co-construct an environment that invites and respects conversations that reflect the diversity of disciplines, career stages, and personal identities across our lab. To facilitate communication, we engage students, trainees, and lab personnel in open conversations that span disciplines and people from all career stages. We are accountable to and for each other in the lab. All students and trainees also receive feedback on their scientific goals and career goals. We are receptive to and welcome constructive feedback from lab members across career stages as well as from research participants.
• We are committed to providing supported time for attending workshops and trainings to support critical self-reflection and life-long learning.
• In addition to trainings and workshops outside of the lab, we are committed to holding regular lab discussions centered on research articles or topics relevant to our lab members, our research participants, and the broader community.
• We collaborate with Tara Davila, LCSW, YCSC vice chair for collaborative excellence, and attend related trainings and engage in ongoing collaborations to benefit our lab, research, community, and team members.

We are committed to the following efforts in our communities and with our community participants:

• We aim to broadly recruit participants for our research studies to ensure representation of our findings. We work to enhance accessibility of participation in our studies such as assistance with transportation costs, accommodating the needs and individual learning needs of our participants during study visits, and working to optimize research benefits to participants such as providing a summary of diagnostic assessments completed during the research visit in meaningful and accessible ways.
• We commit to engaging in reciprocal relations with the New Haven community via attendance at local events, participating in outreach efforts, and engaging with community members with all perspectives and experiences.
• We disseminate our findings to a range of communities and encourage feedback from community participants regarding our research and enhancing the ways that we can work to achieve participation that is inclusive of all of New Haven’s diverse populations. Additionally, we transparently share research findings with the community and center their expertise in identifying and disseminating relevant findings.
• We work to establish relationships with community members and organizations to learn more about their needs and interests, and we work to align our efforts with community needs. We welcome any suggestions and/or partnerships to advance our research progress and contributions to the broader community.

As a researcher, striving for excellence in mentoring is a priority. What I value most about mentoring and teaching is the privilege to contribute to guiding the next generation of scientists—fostering their intellectual growth, pursuits, career development, and innovation. I believe that mentoring is a powerful tool for empowering students to push the boundaries of knowledge, strive towards excellence, achieve their career goals, and ultimately thrive during their scientific journey. In order to achieve these goals, my mentoring emphasizes developing interdisciplinary knowledge, empowerment, and professional development of my students and trainees.

Regarding development of interdisciplinary skills, anyone new to neuroscience may find it difficult to grasp the plethora of new terms, concepts, and computational approaches. Mentees often benefit from a combination of explanation and engagement of the skill, followed by exploration, elaboration, and evaluation. To ensure that mentees in my laboratory gain this valuable experience, I provide guided readings and discussions based on the literature. Additionally, some students may opt to complete a literature review to build theoretical knowledge. Engaging in hands-on research is also important in learning to bridge theoretical and applied scientific knowledge, particularly related to translational neuroscience research. For instance, learning to conduct neuroimaging analyses, then mapping activation patterns to specific brain regions or networks and interpreting findings in terms of cognitive processes are important aspects of training for linking theoretical and experimental components of research. To develop science communication skills, I also provide mentees with opportunities to engage in presentations in the laboratory, department, and/or research conferences. Engaging in research presentations serves to build students’ proficiency communicating findings in a clear and concise manner to colleagues, peers, and community partners and participants.

Regarding empowerment, mentoring should promote the self-efficacy of mentees to ensure achievement of their career goals. To achieve this, I support mentees in pursuing independent research from the conception of the project aims to conducting analyses and manuscript preparation. As a proponent of experiential and participatory learning, my mentoring integrates reciprocal learning approaches. Related to this, mentees are paired with early-career colleagues to develop their own mentoring skills as future scientists and leaders. I also strive to serve the needs of all students and trainees regardless of their experiences or perspectives, support their engagement in the class or laboratory, and ensure all voices are heard and all students have a chance to participate fully in the learning process.

In addition to fostering scientific knowledge, my approach to mentoring also places emphasis on training in professional development, which is essential to foster leadership and communication skills. Mentoring in professional development includes providing mentees with guidance on career planning, grant and manuscript writing, publishing, presenting, networking, and navigating the job market. My overall goal is for mentees to be equipped with the foundational skills and knowledge to succeed in their career paths.

As a researcher and mentor, my goal is to cultivate the next generation of scientists capable of producing cutting-edge, innovative, and transformative research. My mentoring emphasizes a well-rounded approach to nurturing the scientific and professional development of mentees as future leaders. I am dedicated to guiding mentees on their individual career paths in the pursuit of intellectual excellence. My hope is that students and trainees will employ their knowledge, ideas, and innovations to benefit humanity, advance scientific discovery, and enhance patient care for child and adolescent mental health.

Our lab is dedicated to mentoring and fostering the career and professional development of students and trainees. As a new student or trainee in our lab, will participate in onboarding including orientation to lab expectations and practices around mentorship when you begin. During initial meetings, we also learn more about your goals while here and discuss the varying ways we can help you meet them.

Students and trainees in the lab are expected to keep a running document (stored on SharePoint or OneDrive) to report on regular progress including methods, findings, problems encountered, and troubleshooting.

Students and trainees writing or using code (R, Python, SPSS) for analyses are expected to also keep a running SharePoint or OneDrive document that is clear, well-organized, and can facilitate replication of findings for other lab members, collaborators, and/or research groups.

Dr. Karim Ibrahim provides all lab members with access to a scheduling system with which they can schedule meetings during any open times on his calendar. Upon request, lab members may also schedule a regular standing meeting.

Dr. Ibrahim’s goal is to facilitate each student and trainee in achieving their full potential and career goals. He guarantees students and trainees that he will be there to help, even after they have left the lab. This can include letters of recommendation, mentorship on career and professional development, or personal advice.