Lab Norms

Northeastern University Human-Centered AI Lab (NEU-HAI) Norms, version May 1, 2026

(inspired by Michael Bernstein’s Research with Michael)

  1. CSCW Code of Conduct is the baseline set of behaviors and level of respect that we expect from each other. Our lab does NOT tolerate harassment, talking down, sexism, racism, or other behaviors that marginalize.

  2. Northeastern University’s Academic Integrity Policy has a set of definitions for Academic Integrity Policy (e.g., Cheating, Plagiarism, Unauthorized Collaboration) and consequences.

  3. Northeastern University’s Policy on Human Subjects Research (IRB) has a set of training and policies for research projects that involve human subjects.

    If you think something goes wrong, report it to me, and I will generally start by having a private conversation with each of the people involved. I will develop consequences dictated by the nature of the violation, since they are the principles of conducting research.

  4. For current Ph.D./visiting scholars/postdocs, our mutually agreed-upon expectation is that you should actively engage in research. Typically, a year of active research will result in one publishable-quality first-authored full-paper submission to a top-tier venue (30+ B.S./M.S./Ph.D. students I have mentored in the past five years have achieved it). For prospective Ph.D./visiting scholars/postdocs, if you find it difficult to meet this expectation, please consider joining another research group that better fits you.

  5. We will have a half-year reflection meeting (December and June). If you are struggling in the first half of the year, we can discuss the explicit criteria, and we will have some time to work on it together. If you continually fail the criteria, then in the second half-year reflection meeting, I will make a recommendation to you (and to the Ph.D. committee) that you should leave this group, so that you will not be surprised.

  6. We only submit papers to top-tier venues (e.g., CHI, CSCW, UIST, Ubicomp, ACL, NAACL, EMNLP…). For unfamiliar domains, CCF-A list is a good starting point. We will ONLY allow a submission if the finished paper is above our publishable quality.

  7. A full paper draft needs to be ready 7 days before the paper submission deadline. Otherwise, no submission.

  8. After the paper is accepted, there are three additional actions: 1) notify the co-author team and check with PI on the acknowledgement grant info; 2) PR for the paper (e.g., update personal and lab’s webpage, post messages on Twitter/LinkedIn/RedNotes/etc.); 3) perform a practice talk before traveling to the conference.

  9. We will sponsor the first author(s) of all accepted full papers to travel to conferences to present their work. If none of your first-authored submissions were accepted in the previous year, depending on funding situations, we can discuss how we may best support your travel to a conference for an accepted co-authored paper.

  10. All academic-related expenses should be submitted in a timely manner. It will be very hard to get reimbursement after 30 days of the expense occurred.

  11. Being actively present at group meetings and on Slack is expected. This means both in terms of literal presence and active engagement (e.g., tossing ideas into the meeting or Slack channel, giving people feedback, asking questions, and finding opportunities to deepen both our insights and our social connections).

  12. I take your time very seriously, and in return, I expect that you will apply your excitement, energy, and creativity to it. This does not mean working every waking hour. I can tell you from personal experience, and those of friends and colleagues, that pushing yourself too hard only results in burnout and uninspiring research. We strongly discourage you from working late at night or during the weekends. If I have concerns about your level of commitment to the project or about how you are prioritizing, I will tell you directly in a weekly meeting, so you can make changes to your behavior.

  13. The university’s academic calendar does not always align with our research activities. If you are a Ph.D./visiting scholar/postdoc/RA student, according to university policy, Spring breaks/Winter breaks/Summer may not be a holiday to us. However, in our lab, you have unlimited vacation days and remote working days. Just ask if you need it.

  14. For Masters and Undergrads RAs: to succeed in research, you need to be able to dedicate significant time to it. Each unit at Northeastern is roughly three hours of work per week outside of the one-hour class/meetings. Making this concrete: for my group, you need to be willing to dedicate at least four units of time — about twelve hours a week outside the meetings — to it in a given semester. I am very happy to support research for credit if you’d like this reflected in your transcript! It’s not uncommon for students to wind up as coauthors on papers, or eventually do a PhD. Happy to chat about this.

Calendar Events (remote participation is fine)

  1. Group meetings (Participation is expected): These are my group meetings. In Spring/Summer 2026, they happen on Wednesdays from 11:00 am–12:00 pm ET in WVH 462 and via Zoom. These are informal status updates, interactive brainstorms, visitors, and social events.

  2. Project meetings (Participation is expected): This is where we go deep on your project. Typical schedule for PhD students or postdocs: one meeting (30 min) each week for each project. If you are an undergraduate or MS student, you are likely to be joining an existing project, so find out when that project meeting is happening, and join it. If you can not attend or host a project meeting, notify every collaborator 24 hours in advance.

  3. One-on-one meetings: Each Ph.D./visiting scholars/postdocs has the opportunity (but not required) to set up a one-on-one meeting (30min) each week to get some additional thoughts or feedback on research topics or career development.

  4. Writing workshop: This is where our group conducts peer review and editing of our paper drafts. In Spring/Summer 2026, they happen on Wednesday 7:00pm–8:30pm ET in WVH 310 and via Zoom. It is expected to participate if you plan to submit a paper with a deadline in the next 3 months. We will NOT allow you to submit a paper if you fail to attend twice in a row without an appropriate reason.

  5. On-demand meetings: Feel free to grab any slot on my calendar available at https://calendly.com/dakuow/ I like it when people do this — any time you don’t reserve will get reserved by administrative, non-research meetings instead, and yours are more fun!

Getting Started

If you are a visiting or rotating PhD student, master’s student, or undergraduate, make sure you do all of these. We will approve your membership on these lists if you agree with the NEU-HAI group norms listed on this page:

  1. Subscribe to the list by filling out this form. This is all of Dakuo’s group members.
  2. Subscribe to the list by filling out this second form. This list is for all the HCI researchers, not just Dakuo’s group.
  3. Ask a lab member to invite you to the NEU-HAI Slack org. Make sure you subscribe to the channel. We often use Slack for quick chats and questions.
  4. Join the NEU-HAI Notion workspace (you need to ask for an invitation). This is where we keep track of all the ongoing and past projects.
  5. If you will be involved in a project that is deployed to users or runs a user study, do Northeastern IRB training to learn about the ethical treatment of research participants. Go to the Northeastern Human Subject Study training webpage and follow the instructions. You don’t need to do this immediately: set yourself a TODO to finish it in the next week or two. It might take a couple of hours.
  6. For our first project together, I will encourage a project closer to the core of the human-centered AI systems that we have been working on recently so that we can develop a strong collaboration and mentorship rhythm; later projects may push further on the boundaries.