Notes on a retreat to Bristol.

Scientists talking to scientists can take multiple forms. There are conversations between colleagues that can be done within an academic lab, company or team. There are talks given at conferences, seminars or through invitation. There are publications and social media discussions. Exchanges with collaborators. Coffee chats. The spectrum of formality is dependent on the specific flavour of scientist talking to scientist, but one thing is clear: communication underpins scientific progress and growth as young researchers. This might seem obvious, yet our recent retreat in Bristol has made us believe there are yet better ways to pack information in a signal-dense manner, and capture the essence of a scientist’s POV.

Before we dive into it, here is some context. We are Rethink Matters, an Innovator Circle powered by ARIA which meets fortnightly to discuss bio-based materials and biomaterials. Last weekend, we hopped on trains from London, Oxford and Edinburgh in the direction of Bristol with an agenda:

1. a visit to an academic materials lab in the School of Civil, Aerospace and Design Engineering
2. another to a startup at Science Creates
3. an event we organised aiming to connect with the local Biomaterials and Engineering Biology community.

First, what we did

Our first stop of the visit was Bristol’s Composites Institute (the largest university composite research group in the UK), where we were met by Professor Fabrizio Scarpa. Over the next two hours, we checked out the acoustic wind tunnels, a six-axis shaking table to simulate earthquakes, industrial robotic arms, and manufacturing facilities. Fabrizio narrated the tour and very generously answered all our questions. We spoke about metamaterials, about biobased shape-memory structures actuated by humidity, temperature, and light, the challenges of biomimetic designs in a manufacturing industry dominated by bulk materials, and wooden satellites for re-entry. Then the conversation shifted to the wider picture, and we exchanged thoughts on the biggest challenges of the field and its exciting applications. According to Fabrizio, we only got through 20% of the tour before we had to go on to our next appointment, but we definitely left feeling inspired.

Two kilometres to the east lies Science Creates (SC) Old Market campus, which incubates many of Bristol’s biotech spinouts. There we met Ben Carter from Hone Bio, who gave us a tour of SC Old Market. Hone Bio works on improving targeted therapeutic delivery with lipid nanoparticles. Ben was a great host, and the tour was enhanced by the visual aids, such as a 3D model of their antibodies, which are modified using their NanoPilot platform. SC also has an outreach arm under which they organise demonstrations and workshops for young scientists, often involving scientists from SC’s frontier biotech companies as leads. It was great to see emphasis being put on raising the next generation of scientific leaders through direct interaction with current innovators (you can support their charity here).

We ended our Friday in the only proper way: down at the pub. Some of Bristol’s academics and innovators joined us for the evening, and we spent the remaining hours of the day geeking out about biomanufacturing, space drug development, what constitutes life, AI, opportunity spaces, future of biomaterials, the potential impacts of biomaterials, and Ivy’s crowdfunding idea for sequencing her lab pet.

Day 2 included a relaxing morning of walking and a long run around the beautiful Bristol Harbour. We then dove straight into our own session to summarise and digest the previous day and reflect on how to share our 9 months of learnings with the world (keep your eyes peeled!).