New initiative: SMARTbiomed ”fireside chats”

As the latest initiative to spring from the SMARTbiomed focus on creating a good environment for early career researchers to learn, grow and network, the SMARTbiomed Fireside Chats are opportunities to hear the career history of a veteran researcher – from within SMARTbiomed or an outside guest. The first session was held at the end of August just as everyone was returning from their summer break, with SMARTbiomed co-director Preben Bo Mortensen speaking. Our communications coordinator Miranda Hensing sat down briefly to discuss the initiative with SMARTbiomed postdoc research fellow Jakob Zeitler, who set the initiative in motion.

Miranda: The SMARTbiomed Fireside Chats is a new initiative taken by you and put into motion with the help of our coordinators. Could you briefly describe the idea, how you came by it, and how you came to put it into motion?

Jakob: The Fireside Chats are inspired from an idea at Jesus College, Oxford, where a new generation of early career researchers was really interested in tapping into the experience of senior researchers, people who have “been in their situation” before.

It was originally built around term meetings around dinner, but we reshaped the idea as an initiative inside SMARTbiomed to make it a lunch talk. Denmark and Oxford are close enough in terms of timezones that it works well that way.

Miranda: The first Fireside Chat has just been held, with founder of the National Centre for Register-based Research NCRR and SMARTbiomed co-director Preben Bo Mortensen as the guest speaker. Do you feel it was a good “pilot” episode? What were your best and most important takeaways from it?

Jakob: Our “pilot” episode with Preben went exceptionally well! We were worried that the summer holidays would make it difficult to schedule for the people involved, but we were able to make it work for a nice group of PhD and postdoc researchers.

Preben gave a wonderful talk, sparking some really important questions about career development.

Miranda: One of the things Preben talked about being important was to foster cooperation with those who are invested in cooperation – could you talk about your own experiences with this at SMARTbiomed?

Jakob: As one of the first few hires at SMARTbiomed in Oxford, I had a chance to shape the direction as we work to reach critical mass. I am excited to see it continue as more new hires join us here.

With the annual meeting in Denmark and with a wonderful summer school setting there’s a very productive mix of activities and interactions where cooperation can then take place.

I think with research talent, it is important to create first and foremost a productive environment and I hope the Fireside Chats can give one more piece to the puzzle of that equation.

Miranda: Another thing Preben talked about is “working with people smarter than you”, or “working with people who know different things than you”. As the lone communications person dropped into a department of mathematics and immunology experts, this felt very appropriate to my situation – how do you look at it from “within” that group?

Jakob: Terminology differs significantly between different SMARTbiomed environments and so there’s been a concerted and focused effort about creating a common language throughout the interactions, whether it is bigger events like the summer school or just a one-to-one call between Denmark and Oxford.

Better communication and finding a “common language” is a key goal and a key output for us, in my opinion.

Miranda: What is the plan going forward? How many Fireside Chats are planned for the remainder of the year, and how do you go about finding fitting guest speakers for them?

Jakob: The Fireside Chats are very much a community initiative, so there’s no one single leader running the program. Instead, everyone is encouraged to suggest speakers and lead sessions. We’re hoping to have one Fireside Chat every one to two months depending on holidays and other schedules, so do get involved. There’s something everyone can contribute. We have a great opportunity here to enable cohort sharing of experience between seniors and juniors, and beyond, so taking the time during a lunch break once every two months I personally believe can make a big difference.

If you are a SMARTbiomed researcher who wishes to learn more about the Fireside Chats, suggest a guest and/or volunteer to host a session, get in touch with one of our coordinators.