HOW discussion: How can ACCELNET support collaboration to close knowledge gaps?

[crossley]

Please share your feedback on this group discussion by replying in this thread. Your contributions are important as we aim to identify gaps in knowledge, pinpoint collaborators who can help us bridge these gaps, and explore how sustainable collaboration within the ARCANI network can address these issues. We will incorporate the thoughts and opinions expressed here into a white paper focused on these critical questions.

[Daspraelon]

The total grant is likely to be about $2M. Once you take away all the nonsense, that doesn’t leave a ton of money for human time. What do you think are efficient uses of money that maximize networking successes?

[HoverflyLab]

Mobility funding, for e.g. students to exchange techniques and knowledge. Longer visits are important.

[BrunovanSwinderen]

Supporting higher degree research students is crucial. They are the ones often doing most of the work (e.g., experiments) so will benefit most from collaborative stays with colleagues, to learn new techniques, etc. Also, they find this very rewarding and it often motivates them to stay in the field and find postdocs in collaborating labs. This promotes continuity for projects that often take lots of time.

[ABBarron]

The total grant is likely to be about $2M. Once you take away all the nonsense, that doesn’t leave a ton of money for human time. What do you think are efficient uses of money that maximize networking successes?

yes indeed - and it will be 2M over 3 years if we get it.

[ABBarron]

ECRs!!!!!! This kind of networking and connection can give a huge uplift to an ECR trajectory. Plus ECRs can leverage the involvement for their own grant and paper successes.

[HoverflyLab]

There's a benefit in meeting face to face, but online meetings work when social connections have already been made (and saves travelling time and time away from family and other commitments)

[patrickmcgivern]

Having resources to share experiences relating to visiting labs, engaging in workshops, etc. would be helpful especially for ECRs - something to provide practical suggestions on how to make the most of such opportunities

[kozzy97]

To free time for the PIs, it seems like a good use could be to hire support the administrative side of organising the network, the workshops, funding applications, etc.

[ABBarron]

cross-disciplinary summer schools. This came up in the WHAT conversation but it would be amazing to have a summer school where an old neuroscientist like me could learn machine learning theory and machine learning theorists could learn principles of neuroscience.

[ABBarron]

Supporting higher degree research students is crucial. They are the ones often doing most of the work (e.g., experiments) so will benefit most from collaborative stays with colleagues, to learn new techniques, etc. Also, they find this very rewarding and it often motivates them to stay in the field and find postdocs in collaborating labs. This promotes continuity for projects that often take lots of time.

yes - a specific visit for a month or so to upskill in a new field could be hugely beneficial for a PhD student

[Somayeh-h]

Face to face meetings (in small groups, with discussions for a short term) are much better in terms of meeting with people, and have engaging discussions. Online meetings makes it harder to have great discussions, and hard to focus, but if we know most people in the online meeting, then that’s much better.

[ookwrd]

We talked about the concept of « sticky campus », designed to keep students on site, interacting in person. There must be features of design for meetings that make for richer interactions.

[ABBarron]

Retreats in pretty places away from a home institution. I've found mountainous isolated 3-day retreats with wifi but not the demands of campus can be hugely productive for long conversations and getting writing done.

[jarmarshall]

Table discussion - @Daspraelon - convene 'fringe' events at mainstream conferences, e.g. NeurIPS to bring together researchers who would not usually attend

[ookwrd]

Design general good practice, for ARCANI to support parents (especially with young children) to be able to participate and engage in meetings.

[Somayeh-h]

Maybe now that we have the option on doing teaching online, it makes it more possible to travel, considering other commitments.

[kozzy97]

Smaller, more frequent workshops for particular geographical regions of the network

[Somayeh-h]

Event duration should not be long enough to impact regular schedule, but in short term like this workshop, it’s great to have this time just to focus on discussions.

[RMenary]

PhD, post-doc exchange programme.

[BrunovanSwinderen]

The most productive collaborations are with colleagues who have become your friends over time. True collaborations emerge mostly from bottom-up interactions like that, rather than top-down plans. Friends are the ones you share crazy ideas with, you're not afraid of looking dumb, you trust them. How you become friends with other scientists is all about breaking bread with them. It takes time, and doesn't have to be all about the science to begin with. Sounds elitist to find ways to support this more, but it really does work to promote creativity.

[HoverflyLab]

Collective list of conferences that people re going to anyway, to set yp face-to-face meetings or organize workshops

[RMenary]

More opportunities for adventurous thinking!

[ABBarron]

Smaller, more frequent workshops for particular geographical regions of the network

yes - smaller regular meetings with less of a travel burden and fewer larger collective meetings. So a fractal type model

[ookwrd]

Share a list of conferences and events we are attending – so as to help decision making in terms of selecting events and facilitating the organization of workshops on topics of interest at those events.

[alexjgillett1984]

Regular workshops would be good but need to be targetted. Workshops, working parties, and exchanges between labs should be orientated towards some kind of permanent network that needs to be anchored to a "something" in an institution

[HoverflyLab]

Non-traditional discussions - e.g. while hiking, or doing some other physical activity (assuming ablebody-ness)

[ABBarron]

Regular workshops would be good but need to be targetted. Workshops, working parties, and exchanges between labs should be orientated towards some kind of permanent network that needs to be anchored to a "something" in an institution

yeah we do need an anchor to keep things moving and keep an eye on overall progress. Plus there will be a non-trivial admin burden to this.

[ookwrd]

Co-doodling (without further comments for now)

[kozzy97]

ARCANI discord server (as a 'bespoke digital resource')

[alexjgillett1984]

Exchanges between labs: Lots of value for bringing in people from differing backgrounds/perspectives. Dissemination and communication of ideas. Being able to bring in someone with expertise in an area that may be lacking in the lab to run seminars for postdocs and grad students, (etc.). Interdisciplinary exchanges are what are most important here. Focus particularly on travel grants for ECRs and post-docs

[crossley]

I will flush these out when I get a chance, but here is the bullet list of our discussion points:

• Ultimately not a lot of money

• residency

• zoom

• conference

• write out Kalman Filter Wolpert / Ivry story

• RL / conditioning examples -- Bob Taylor -- Leonard Kleinrock -- Joseph Licklider -- Larry Roberts

• Meeting of a small group of elites

• administrative resources / designated grant write

[Daspraelon]

Grant writer/funding sourcer

[Daspraelon]

Family-friendly designs of events/funding opportunities.

[HoverflyLab]

Time saving: Use machine learning to speed up some training tasks (i.e. identifying individual monkeys). Also creates collaborations between fields (e.g. primatology and machine learning).

[HoverflyLab]

Family-friendly designs of events/funding opportunities.

As well as having other cultural obligations.

[alexjgillett1984]

Longer visits – summer/winter school. Focus on bringing in ECRs and grad/post-grads. Not just seminars and workshops. But also involving non-academic activities (e.g., rock climbing, snorkelling, bushwalking, etc.). Would have group projects that push people to be interdisciplinary.

[Daspraelon]

Facilitated information regarding who’s going to what sort of meeting when…

[gmfricke]

I like an idea presented at our table of hiring a grant support person funded to save researcher time by understanding the funding landscape and identifying and supporting co-PIs who fit the bill during the grant submission process. This would address how ARCANI can save researcher time. Drawback that was pointed out is the delay in seeing returns.

[ABBarron]

I like an idea presented at our table of hiring a grant support person funded to save researcher time by understanding the funding landscape and identifying and supporting co-PIs who fit the bill during the grant submission process. This would address how ACARIS can save researcher time. Drawback that was pointed out is the delay in seeing returns.

this could be really important because to source funding that can be used across countries might mean tapping into funding pots that are not conventionally used.

[HoverflyLab]

Interdisciplinary, intercontinental job platform with upcoming opportunities . This could free up time for ECRs (who spend a lot of time worrying about where there salary is coming from next) to instead focus on the next crazy idea.

[ookwrd]

Investing more into local conferences? Cheaper for travel and can be higher quality/food/comfort – motivating to free time.

[ookwrd]

Building a map of people + events.

[MartaHalina]

A prize to reward interdisciplinary work and help overcome disciplinary silos.

[RMenary]

project/problem based meetings to develop publications and grant applications - Somayeh's idea.

[ookwrd]

A prize to reward interdisciplinary work and help overcome disciplinary silos.

Excellent idea. Perhaps some award(s) as well, if there is a structure/committee/society giving them out?

[BrunovanSwinderen]

Promote more local gatherings that are well-supported, rather than spending on airfares. We often don't know who's doing related work in our area. We end up finding this out by meeting in faraway places. We could use a local network map to identify interested parties. Then support these with gatherings that aren't necessarily about the science to begin with, but just break ice and bread. Use the saved airfare costs for interesting settings. This could help establish the kind of friendship/collaborations that are more sustainable through time because they're local.

[ABBarron]

The most productive collaborations are with colleagues who have become your friends over time. True collaborations emerge mostly from bottom-up interactions like that, rather than top-down plans. Friends are the ones you share crazy ideas with, you're not afraid of looking dumb, you trust them. How you become friends with other scientists is all about breaking bread with them. It takes time, and doesn't have to be all about the science to begin with. Sounds elitist to find ways to support this more, but it really does work to promote creativity.

yes - and are there activities that we could put in place that could foster that sense of trust and build friendship in the community? Social engineering is rarely successful, but if this could be done we might achieve that goal of an enduring network that outlives the life of the grant.

[ABBarron]

project/problem based meetings to develop publications and grant applications.

yes! So meetings become productive and catalysers of more inputs and outputs to the network. That could help the network move along to "sustainability" beyond the life of the grant.

[jarmarshall]

Break down interdisciplinary communication boundaries through a wiki that crowd-sources definitions, allows disambiguation on terminology, definitions of fields (e.g. neuro-anthropology) - project officer with a training in one relevant science background could curate

[ABBarron]

A prize to reward interdisciplinary work and help overcome disciplinary silos.

Excellent idea. Perhaps some award(s) as well, if there is a structure/committee/society giving them out?

ooooh! A prize! This could be totally transformative for an ECR trajectory but it would not cost much!