Collaboration and interdisciplinarity research is the future aim for BiOrbic. 

On Friday the 14th of January, the BiOrbic centre had an integration event to encourage coming together as a centre from different institutions and disciplines to collaborate. For this event, BiOrbic Principal Investigators, Funded Investigators, Academic Collaborators and Operational Team members, came together to see where the centre is at the moment, and in what direction it should be headed. 27 in total attended the online event which featured two workshops and a guest speaker. 

The opening speech was given by Director Kevin O’Connor where he gave the story of the centre, the achievements it’s had so far, and what pathways could be carved in the future. After this, attendees were broken up into groups for the first workshop, The Status Quo, to review where each participant thought the centre was at. All groups discussed questions relating to research, collaborations and the general effect of the centre on the researchers to date, and all answers were brought to be shared and spoken about in the main group.

Lukas Toroslu was the guest for the day. Toroslu has an impressive background in psychology, namely psychological well-being and organisational psychology. He gave all attendees a motivational speech all about how important collaboration is and things to work on in the future.

A final workshop The Way Ahead was held after the speaker. This workshop was to brainstorm where each attendee thought the centre should be going and what achievements were to be made. A strong emphasis was placed on collaborations and what and how these would take place going forward. Once again, each group’s thoughts were brought back to the main channel to be discussed before Derek O’Brien, BiOrbic’s executive director, closed the event.

General discussion between the attendees was that collaboration should be prerequisite BiOrbic, and the centre needs to define its work around other disciplines not normally thought of, such as social sciences. While collaboration is important and agreement is good, it’s important to challenge one another to avoid becoming an echo chamber. Challenged-based approaches through collaboration are key to the future. 

Thanks to everyone who attended this event, the Lukas Toroslu for speaking and to Melanie Baur for organising. Looking forward to the next!