Getting everybody together, especially in this type of situation, which kind of fosters
discussions and collaborations, it really helps us to learn what everybody's doing,
what everybody's part in the project is, and how we can really work together.
I think this year we've really come to realize how valuable the collaboration is.
Now that we've had a little over a year to work with the full team, and to really see
the kind of work you can get done, the amount of work you can get done, and actually how
much fun you can have doing it really when you're working with a team with so much
expertise and so much experience.
This kind of get-together builds more relationships so you sometimes get to talk in detail and
understand their opinions as well as certain difficulties or certain hurdles that each
group would have when working together, so this is a great opportunity for sharing the
knowledge of multiple institutions here.
This meeting really gives us an opportunity to get together face-to-face and discuss the
science, discuss challenges, and come up with creative new ideas.
It's really instrumental in driving this project forward and the success of the project depends
on having the ability to meet face-to-face like this.
It's fantastic because we can talk to everybody, we can see all the collaborations between
people, and we can redesign in fact the next set of experiments, so that is very important.
It's actually good to not just hear about what they're doing, but actually see the
presentations and see the results, see what they're doing, and see how everything comes
together as a whole.
We all have a wide variety of expertise that can be applied to a lot of different biological
questions and that's something that we do extensively in the night lab.
We collaborate on several different projects, so without a doubt something like this is
going to lead to more collaborations that are going to be fruitful, even if the project
is completely unrelated.
Most of the projects I think that probably we'll have going forward are going to come
from meetings like this where you're face-to-face with someone.
That's really where you get to talk about new ideas, you get to think through them,
you get to listen to other people's work and kind of spur your own imagination, and there's
nothing that can replace the face-to-face meeting.
I think a science-rich program such as this one, where so many different activities are
going on and we're discovering so many new things nearly on a monthly basis, it's really
hard not to have all these new projects spawning off.
Anybody who's a scientist loves getting together with other scientists to talk about things.
You just need to sit down for five minutes and the good ideas come.
So I think people getting together like this is a good way of synthesizing new projects
and developing collaborations.
I think that's very important to have all these young scientists who can present their
own data.
I think that's very important.
The young researchers actually bring in new ideas and new techniques, new technology that
they are learning right after college and they are contributing to the project, to the
groups, whereas sharing and getting the guidance of the senior researchers.
It also gives them a picture of how science works in the larger world in the bigger picture.
They really get to see other researchers at other institutions interact with scientists
that you normally don't get to interact with.
It's an incredibly important part of the project and an incredibly, I think, important part
of these young scientists' development.
It's actually exciting and inspiring to see some of the things that people are doing and
to realize that I can get there and I have great people to collaborate with as mentors
and people that I can ask questions to help progress my career as well.
Well, younger scientists and interns are really the lifebloods of any laboratory.
These are the people that are carrying on the research on a day-to-day basis.
Older scientists can see that as a responsibility but also a privilege to teach the younger
generation.
So, all together we can just create and work on this great project that eventually leads
to a bright new generation of scientists.
