Winners from the Collaboration Creation Days workshop have been awarded this week for their proposals presented at the end of the event.
In September, the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute Interdisciplinary Research Centre, together with Sensor CDT, Cambridge Centre for Physical Biology, and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, hosted an interdisciplinary workshop for Cambridge academics.
‘Collaboration Creation Days: Where cell biology, physics and sensors meet’ was a first-time Stem Cells IRC workshop designed to unite scientists from various fields and career stages to test their ideas, build an interdisciplinary team, and pitch their research to an expert funding panel for a chance to win funding for their project.
Throughout the 3.5 day workshop, the participants (PhD students, PostDocs and early career scientists) took part in lectures and group work before presenting their own research ideas.
In the first two days of the workshops the participants heard from world-class scientists about their interdisciplinary research, associated challenges and opportunities. Speakers were Prof. George Malliaras, Dr. Anthie Moysidou, Prof. Kevin Chalut, Dr. Matthias Zilbauer, Dr. Alex Justin and Prof. Madeline Lancaster.
On the last day the students presented their research pitch to an expert panel including Prof. Roisin Owens, Prof. Serena Best, Dr. Maria Alcolea and Dr. Mekayla Storer and competed to win a research grant to work on the project.
The groups are being awarded up to £4,000 to continue work on their proposed projects. An update to those projects will be shared here on completion.
The winning groups are:
Group 1: Nino, Shirom and Ziqi with the project proposal "Deciphering the Spatial Determinants of Human Lung Development"
Group 2: Sabila, Udit, Kyriacos, Chi Ki with the project proposal " Proposal to investigate the role of adaptor proteins in mRNA transport in the oocyte-to-embryo transition in Drosophila"
Group 3: Meng, Ana, Jan and Aish with the project proposal "Observing oxidative stress and morphogenesis alterations during mechanical force regulation in chicken embryo stem cells"
This workshop will be repeated again in future years for researchers who are interested in multidisciplinary work.