As part of our mission to promote interdisciplinarity and collaboration, the BIST research centres are organizing PhD students’ visits, one to each centre.
The goal of these visits is to allow the BIST PhD fellows and first year PhD students to discover the BIST community through interacting with one another, sharing their research, and learning that research at other centres can be surprisingly relevant to their own work. These visits also provide an opportunity for participants to meet regularly and build connections with one another.
On January 26th, the first visit took place at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Castelldefels. The morning started with a presentation about ICFO by Dr. Robert Sewell, ICFO Staff Scientist and Coordinator of Academic Programs, followed by a scientific seminar by Prof. Dr. Romain Quidant, ICFO Group Leader of the Plasmon Nano-Optics Research Group. Throughout these talks, inspiring messages were shared about the need for breaking frontiers and engaging more in interdisciplinary research in order to succeed together.
Next was a poster session with pastries and coffee in which PhD students shared their work with each other and with staff. We then got to know ICFO’s two BIST PhD fellows, Lisa Kobayashi and Sebastian Castilla, who explained their work to us through hands-on activities and lab tours. The day ended with a catered lunch in the beautiful ICFO cafè de la llum and a time to chat with new friends.
This visit gave BIST PhD fellows, who are pioneers of the BIST PhD fellowship program, the opportunity to showcase their work and connect with other BIST PhD fellows as well as first year PhD students in the BIST community.
The next visit will be on February 27th at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona and we look forward to continuing our journey of discovering the BIST community then.
Please follow us on twitter (@_BIST) to see real-time information about these visits and other BIST activities.