I just participated in a workshop with a number of other NYU faculty. The framing of the workshop was that there was a potential for external funding for our research. Not surprisingly, attendance was good.
I met a number of interesting NYU faculty at that workshop, potential collaborators whose research I might never have known about otherwise. That alone was incredibly valuable.
This reminded me of something I learned many years ago. We professors love it when the grad students in our labs meet each other and start to collaborate. It’s a big win for everyone, and they generally end up doing better research and producing higher quality publications.
But how do you get your students to show up for such things? They are already working on their own projects, and they might decide they’re just to busy.
The answer, not surprisingly, is pizza. The promise of a free slice or two is like a clarion call — it gets students out of their offices and into the shared space needed for collaborations to begin. And that’s a good thing.
I realized today that the promise of research funding is, essentially, faculty pizza. We all think we’re too busy to busy, but when we smell the possibility of research funding, we all show up to get a slice of the pie, and into the shared space needed for collaborations to begin. And that’s a good thing.