Our Interdisciplinary Science Showcase, a highlight of the first Schmidt Science Fellows Interdisciplinary Science Summit in Toronto, united a wider community of interdisciplinary science supporters and guests with our Fellowship, sponsors, and Program Team.
Throughout the evening event, staged at a spectacular downtown Toronto venue on the shores of Lake Ontario, our Senior Fellows brought their science and interdisciplinary journeys to life through captivating presentations and engaging exhibitions.
The Showcase, held last week (July 19), was part of our commitment to grow and galvanize a visible interdisciplinary science community, providing opportunities to connect, share ideas, and build stronger collaborations.
Inspiring, moving, and hopeful talks were the centerpiece of the evening, helping guests to engage with the ethos and vision of our Program through the very personal stories of those who shape our Fellowship.
Our founding Executive Director, Megan Kenna, opened our showcase evening by sharing her own journey with the audience. Her story explored the importance of community in making extraordinary achievements possible, in science and in life.
She was followed by four feature presentations from Senior Fellows Jyotirmoy Mandal, Berit Goodge, Paul Chen, and Kirsten Hall. The talks allowed the audience to share in their passion, personal motivation, and aspirations for their interdisciplinary work across climate change, materials discovery, medical genome editing, and atmospheric science.
Wendy Schmidt, Co-Founder and President, Schmidt Family Foundation and Schmidt Ocean Institute, and Co-Founder, Schmidt Sciences, joined us at the event to share her perspective on interdisciplinary science.
During her remarks, she commented: “We are working to build a community of scientists who understand the primary value of interdisciplinary work,” as it is “the promise of interdisciplinary science to be able to reach beyond the boundaries of any particular discipline and expertise to connect with an entirely different approach to a problem”.
Alongside the talks, guests discovered more about our Fellows’ research and the innovative approaches they are taking through interactive exhibitions. Six engaging science stands explored work ranging from plant-fungi-bacteria communication that could help us improve regenerative agriculture to understanding how cancer cells evade detection, an insight that could lead to increasingly targeted therapies.
The Showcase Evening was part of our inaugural Interdisciplinary Science Showcase.
The week-long event, the largest we have staged to date, included six days of discussion sessions, workshops, talks, and leadership programming focussed on developing the very best approaches to interdisciplinary science.
The Summit integrated the final Science Leadership Program (SLP) convening for our 2023 Cohort. The SLP is core to our Fellowship and provides Fellows with the skills, experience, and networks required to become the next generation of science leaders. As part of the Summit, we held our annual Progression Dinner to welcome our 2023 Fellows to our Senior Fellow community.
The Summit was hosted in association with the University of Toronto, and we were joined by faculty members and staff throughout the week, sharing expertise in workshops and practice pods and building connections with our Fellows. We also had the privilege of touring cutting-edge interdisciplinary science labs including the Acceleration Consortium, the Kite Lab, and uncovering the vital research function of the Royal Ontario Museum.
We want to thank all those whose energy and commitment made the event such a success.
Photo credit: Claudine Gossett Photography
