Scientific retreats provide an effective opportunity to connect, get creative, discuss science, foster productive collaborations and solve problems. In the fall of 2018, five years after the Functional Genomics Laboratory hosted its last retreat, our supervisor, Michael Udvardi, Ph.D., decided it was time for another lab retreat with his new team of postdocs and research associates.
There are many stories of how interactions in casual settings are conducive for great scientific ideas. In fact, the Eagle Pub, which Watson and Crick frequented during their work on the DNA double-helix structure, is a must-visit for biology enthusiasts traveling to the University of Cambridge in England.
In anticipation of the next Nobel (read: Noble) Prize, therefore, we followed the “Ten Simple Rules on How to Organize a Scientific Retreat” (Ponomarenko et al., 2017). What worked for us as a group and the takeaway messages for any other lab trying to organize a retreat can be summarized as follows.
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