For Collaborators — Lab Handbook

If you’re a researcher from another field considering working with us, here is how we collaborate.

What we can offer

Reformulating your problem into a form that can be analyzed and researched
Based on that analyzable form, methods that are as theoretically grounded as possible and that stand out on small-scale experiments
Our perspective on existing methods as well (for example: their theoretical strengths and weaknesses, what considerations are missing)
Open-source, reproducible implementations — not models that exist only in the paper
An honest statement of capability boundaries — we will tell you plainly what can’t be done yet

A problem whose solution you actually care about — not a problem that merely happens to have data
A definition of “what counts as a good result.” We must settle this before starting, or six months in we’ll discover we’ve been chasing different things
A point of contact willing to join discussions regularly. A collaboration cannot run on one meeting per quarter

Methods research moves slower than applied research, with higher uncertainty. We won’t make promises we can’t keep.
The first meaningful real-world result usually takes at least 3 months, and the first two months mostly go into defining the problem clearly and trying small-scale tests — that stretch doesn’t look like a big output, but it determines everything after.

Settle authorship and data usage before the collaboration starts, in writing. This protects both sides. For how author ordering works inside the lab, see Authorship and Research Contribution.