Lab Onboarding

Once you’ve completed Penn Onboarding, here’s how to get access to the lab itself and our shared tools.

1. Lab Space Access

Our address:

422 Curie Blvd, 3rd floor
Stellar-Chance Laboratories
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Exiting the elevators, the hallways form a square with office suites at 3 corners and a common area/conference room at the 4th. Dr. Cheng’s office is 309C; the lab is directly adjacent in room 310 (labelled “The Coolest Laboratory on EARTH”).

The floor (outside work hours), the building, and the lab itself all require card access. Message Dr. Cheng a photo of your PennCard with your PennCard number — she’ll email Darren Johnson (darrenj@pennmedicine.upenn.edu) to request access to Stellar Chance, BRB, John Morgan, CRB entrances, and the 3rd floor elevator lobby.

If you’re ever locked out, go to security on the 1st floor of Stellar-Chance.

2. Lab Google Drive

Request access is included in the same account-request step below (item 4). The Drive holds reference materials — lab responsibilities, contact info, and the master copy of this manual’s lab-specific content.

3. Lab Slack

Slack is the lab’s primary communication channel: yuyanchenglab.slack.com. Access is granted as part of the account-request step below.

4. Lab GitHub

Send the following to jeffrey.maurer@pennmedicine.upenn.edu and yuyan.cheng@pennmedicine.upenn.edu:

  • Professional headshot
  • Penn email
  • Personal gmail
  • GitHub username (dry lab / anyone pushing code)
  • Birthday

This one email covers GitHub, Slack, the lab Google Calendar, and Drive invites all at once. See Key Contacts if you don’t hear back within a few days.

5. Training

Once you know which track(s) you’ll be working in:

  • Wet lab: Wet Lab → Training — Essential safety training, plus Mouse-Specific training if you’ll be working with animals
  • Dry lab: Dry Lab → Training — required training and lab-specific computing orientation

6. 1:1 Meetings

Send Dr. Cheng your class schedule/availability so she can set up a recurring 1:1. See Lab Meetings for how the different meeting levels (group, project-specific, 1:1) work.

Other Lab Accounts (bundled into the same request)

Penn Medicine Email (optional for most positions)

Request one here. Use:

Department: Ophthalmology
Building: Stellar-Chance Laboratories
Manager: Yuyan Cheng, Ophthalmology, 305-778-6357
yuyan.cheng@pennmedicine.upenn.edu, PennKey: ycheng11

Dr. Cheng will forward the account-creation email with your temporary password.

Printers & Equipment

The lab printer (HP Color LaserJet Pro M478f-9f, IP 130.91.197.113) is shared with the Uyhazi lab. For Windows 11 setup instructions, see the archived Lab Resources page — TODO: confirm this should move here instead.