MIST Lab Website

The website for the MIST Lab at Polytechnique Montréal. Built with Eleventy (a static site generator) and deployed to GitHub Pages. Almost everything you'll want to change lives in plain YAML data files or Markdown member pages — no web development needed.

MIST has no fixed meaning — the homepage cycles through possibilities on purpose. Edit the word lists in _data/acronym.yaml.

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Editing content

I want to…	Edit this
Add / edit a lab member	A file in src/people/ — see below
Move someone to alumni	_data/alumni.yaml (and optionally delete their src/people/*.md)
Change the rotating MIST words	_data/acronym.yaml
Add a news item	_data/news.yaml
Edit research areas	_data/projects.yaml
Edit courses	_data/courses.yaml
Edit the missions gallery	_data/missions.yaml
Edit spin-off companies	_data/spinoffs.yaml
Change email / address / stats	_data/site.yaml

Add or edit a lab member

Each member is one Markdown file in src/people/. The filename becomes the URL (monica-li.md → /people/monica-li/).

1. Copy src/people/_TEMPLATE.md to firstname-lastname.md.
2. Fill in the front matter at the top (name, role, title, links…). The role field controls which group the person appears under on the People page — valid values: faculty, research_associate, postdoc, phd, msc, intern (the group order is set in _data/roles.yaml).
3. Add a square photo (~600×600) to assets/images/people/ and point photo: at its filename. No photo? Delete the photo: line and the page shows the person's initials.
4. Write the bio below the second --- in Markdown.

The _TEMPLATE.md file never appears on the site (it's excluded in .eleventyignore).

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Publications

The Publications page is generated automatically from ORCID. You don't edit it by hand.

• It reads the orcid: field from each faculty member's file in src/people/ and fetches their works from the ORCID public API, deduplicating across all three PIs.
• A GitHub Action (update-publications.yml) refreshes it weekly (Mondays). You can also trigger it manually from the repo's Actions tab → Update Publications from ORCID → Run workflow.
• To refresh locally: npm run fetch-pubs.

ORCID profiles are only as complete as each person keeps them. If a PI's publication list looks short, they should add their works on orcid.org. Google Scholar links on the page cover the rest.

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Running locally

You need Node.js 18+.

npm install      # once
npm start        # serves http://localhost:8080 with live reload
npm run build    # one-off build into _site/

No Node installed? You can build in Docker instead:

docker run --rm -v "$PWD":/app -w /app node:20-alpine \
  sh -c "npm install && npx @11ty/eleventy --serve --port 8080"

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Deployment (GitHub Pages)

1. Push this folder to a GitHub repository (e.g. in the MISTLab org).
2. In the repo: Settings → Pages → Build and deployment → Source: GitHub Actions.
3. Pushing to main builds and deploys via deploy.yml.

One setting that depends on the URL: PATH_PREFIX

GitHub Pages serves project repos under a subpath (username.github.io/REPO/), so links must be prefixed. This is controlled by the PATH_PREFIX env var in deploy.yml:

Where the site lives	Set PATH_PREFIX to
Custom domain mistlab.ca	"/"
Org page mistlab.github.io	"/"
Project page mistlab.github.io/website/	"/website/"

All internal links use Eleventy's url filter, so this single value is the only thing to change.

Custom domain (mistlab.ca)

Add a file named CNAME at the repo root containing mistlab.ca, set PATH_PREFIX to "/", and configure the domain under Settings → Pages.

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Project layout

_data/            YAML/JSON content (site, people groups, news, acronym, …)
src/              Pages (.njk) and per-person Markdown in src/people/
_includes/        Shared layouts and partials (nav, footer, person page)
assets/           CSS, JS, images (people/, missions/)
scripts/          ORCID publication fetcher
.github/workflows Deploy + weekly publications refresh