Last year when I launched my lab (which, full disclosure, is really just me, plus some of my friends who were kind enough to let me plaster their names and faces on my website), I decided to call it the Psychoinformatics Lab (or PILab for short and pretentious), because, well, why not. It seemed to nicely capture what my research is about: psychology and informatics. But it wasn’t an entirely comfortable decision, because a non-trivial portion of my brain was quite convinced that everyone was going to laugh at me. And even now, after more than a year of saying I’m a “psychoinformatician” whenever anyone asks me what I do, I still feel a little bit fraudulent each time–as if I’d just said I was a member of the Estonian Cosmonaut program, or the president of the Build-a-Bear fan club*.
But then… just last week… everything suddenly changed! All in one fell swoop–in one tiny little nudge of a shove-this-on-the-internet button, things became magically better. And now colors are vibrating**, birds are chirping merry chirping songs–no, wait, those are actually cicadas–and the world is basking in a pleasant red glow of humming monitors and five-star Amazon reviews. Or something like that. I’m not so good with the metaphors.
Why so upbeat, you ask? Well, because as of this writing, there is no longer just the one lone Psychoinformatics Lab. No! Now there are not one, not three, not seven Psychoinformatics Labs, but… two! There are two Psychoinformatics Labs. The good Dr. Michael Hanke (of PyMVPA and NeuroDebian fame) has just finished putting the last coat of paint on the inside of his brand new cage Psychoinformatics Lab at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg in Magdeburg, Germany. No, really***: his startup package didn’t include any money for paint, so he had to barter his considerable programming skills for three buckets of Going to the Chapel (yes, that’s a real paint color).
Anyway, in case you can’t tell, I’m quite excited about this. Not because it’s a sign that informatics approaches are making headway in psychology, or that pretty soon every psychology lab will have a high-performance computing cluster hiding in its closet (one can dream, right?). No sir. I’m excited for two much more pedestrian reasons. First, because from now on, any time anyone makes fun of me for calling myself a psychoinformatician, I’ll be able to say, with a straight face, well it’s not just me, you know–there are multiple ones of us doing this here research-type thing with the data and the psychology and the computers. And secondly, because Michael is such a smart and hardworking guy that I’m pretty sure he’s going to legitimize this whole enterprise and drag me along for the ride with him, so I won’t have to do anything else myself. Which is good, because if laziness was an olympic sport, I’d never leave the starting block.
No, but in all seriousness, Michael is an excellent scientist and an exceptional human being, and I couldn’t be happier for him in his new job as Lord Director of All Things Psychoinformatic (Eastern Division). You might think I’m only saying this because he just launched the world’s second PILab, complete with quote from yours truly on said lab’s website front page. Well, you’d be right. But still. He’s a pretty good guy, and I’m sure we’re going to see amazing things coming out of Magdeburg.
Now if anyone wants to launch PILab #3 (maybe in Asia or South America?), just let me know, and I’ll make you the same offer I made Michael: an envelope full of $1 bills (well, you know, I’m an academic–I can’t afford Benjamins just yet) and a blog post full of ridiculous superlatives.
* Perhaps that’s not a good analogy, because that one may actually exist.
** But seriously, in real life, colors should not vibrate. If you ever notice colors vibrating, drive to the nearest emergency room and tell them you’re seeing colors vibrating.
*** No, not really.