Cultivating multidisciplinary collaboration at Imperial

IMSE's first Sandpit event brought together researchers from 10 different departments to inspire innovative multidisciplinary research proposals.

IMSE Sandpit

Organised to help formulate exciting projects for IMSE’s Seed Funding call, the Sandpit – held on 15^th September 2016 – pushed participants to share and explore the reality of the challenges they face in their research. In smaller groups, the academics developed ideas for large-scale grand challenge research projects. These ideas were then refined to generate small pump-priming project concepts that can provide a basis for more ambitious future research proposals.

Feedback received after the Sandpit revealed that the academics most appreciated the opportunity to learn about each other’s research and to explore big ideas with people from different backgrounds. In addition, many new connections were formed and potential collaborations for future research were identified.

Participants appreciated the opportunity to learn about each other’s research, exploring big ideas together with people from different backgrounds, and forming connections with like-minded people who are potential collaborators for future research.

Seed Funding

In total, seven projects have been chosen to receive IMSE Seed Funding. Unfortunately, it was not possible in this programme to fund all the proposals that were fantastic examples of the potential for collaborative research across Imperial departments and faculties.

Other activities

Another highlight of the past year was IMSE’s launch event, which brought together more than 100 internal and external guests to celebrate the impressive multidisciplinary research already happening at Imperial, and to recognise the enormous potential of increased collaboration at the interface of molecular science and engineering.

Looking forward, IMSE has an exciting line-up of lunchtime seminars, Highlight Seminars and co-creation workshops. All these events are focused towards highlighting and encouraging collaboration across the College and with external partners. IMSE will draw on these new interactions to make inroads into grand scientific and technical challenges facing our society.

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