SAFE Labs – a workshop on starting fair, equitable, and successful labs

External Event - 1st to 4th Jun 2025

Following the success of the first Starting Aware, Fair, and Equitable (SAFE) Labs workshop, we are excited to announce the second iteration, which will take place on June 1-4 in the Barcelona Riviera (https://www.aquahotel.com/en/hotels/hotel-promenade-spa/).

The SAFE Labs initiative (https://safelabs.info/) is organised by junior group leaders and aims to support new PIs in the biological sciences by fostering a community of early-career research leaders from across Europe. This workshop promotes discussions and strategies for SAFE Labs with positive research cultures.

Unlike traditional scientific meetings, the SAFE Labs workshop focuses entirely on practical and cultural challenges new group leaders face. The discussions will centre on actionable approaches to fostering transparency, inclusivity, and sustainability in labs. The idea is to have a highly interactive meeting with all the participants actively engaging and/or leading the discussions. 

Participants in our first workshop collaborated to produce the SAFE Labs Handbook (https://github.com/SAFE-Labs-Docs/Lab-Handbook), which outlines commitments that group leaders can adopt to enhance their lab cultures, even without institutional support. For this second workshop, we plan to:

• Share insights from the Handbook.
• Explore new challenges and opportunities in lab leadership.
• Further refine practical strategies for creating impactful, equitable research environments.

The content of the workshop will also be built on the feedback you gathered via the registration form.

The workshop provides fully funded accommodation and meals for selected participants. We also aim to cover travel expenses (at least partially); however, the exact amount will depend on the overall costs for all selected candidates and the available budget. The workshop is aimed at early-career group leaders who have established their labs within the past 1–6 years and have gained initial experience in supervising team members.

If you're interested in attending, please visit https://safelabs.info/ for more information and to apply. Applications will be open until March 2nd. 

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need further details. We would also greatly appreciate it if you could share this opportunity with any colleagues who might be interested.

We look forward to hearing from you and hope to see you at the workshop!