Where are you at this time and what are you most likely to be doing? 

Usually I am at home calling my parents or chatting with friends. Occasionally, I’ll come back to lab to collect samples for experiments if I planned to measure effects every 8 hour to capture time-sensitive changes. I also come to the lab around this time if I want to perform an overnight incubation for 10-12 hours and proceed the experiment in the next day to maximize the sample reaction time.

What would you be shocked to find yourself doing at this time?

Catching zombies ;)

What’s your favorite thing about this time of day?

This is my time for interacting with families and friends in a different time zone. This time is also quiet, so I can do experiments unperturbed in the lab.

Least favorite?

Walking on the streets could be cold at this time.

How can you tell if your work is going well?

I am positive about my work progress if I can see repeatable results and can validate with different approaches.

What tells you it’s not going as expected? What do you do when that happens?

If I saw variations between replicates, I would start trouble-shooting and optimize parameters in the experiment procedure. If I observed unexpected results, I will come to a different hypothesis after validating my results in replicates.