In their effort to establish an Early Career Research (ECR) community for all malaria researchers based at London research institutes, PhD students organized a launch event at the Crick Institute to bring everyone together. Research assistants, research technicians, PhD students and junior postdocs who work under either computational or laboratory settings were encouraged to interact with researchers outside their own social/departmental circles and suggest their ideas about the future of this network. None missed the chance to also show-off their ‘Knowles-it-all’ expertise on a malaria-based pub quiz, while enjoying nibbles and drinks.
Over 50 people from four different London-based institutes registered for the event, with a turnout of 30. It was a fantastic success and the outputs of the evening have included launch of a Slack and Twitter account which will facilitate the direct communication between researchers, a speed-networking event where researchers will have a few minutes to talk about their work with each other and more future social events where researchers will have the opportunity to mainly have fun and build new friendships and collaborations. Everyone in the end left with an ‘Ano-pheeling good’ attitude!
The workshop was made possible through the generous financial support of the Graduate School.