On behalf of Dr. Xiangwu Zhang, Assoc. Dean for Research in the Wilson College of Textiles and Dr. Steve Lommel, Assoc. Dean for Research in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, you are cordially invited to attend an interdisciplinary faculty ideation session that will be held on Wednesday, November 13 from 3:00-5:00 pm at the Wilson College of Textiles Convocation Center (Room 2225) located at 1020 Main Campus Drive on our Centennial Campus.

Immediately following the session, we will hold an optional reception for our participants to continue their interactions. We hope you can participate.

The goal here is to provide a forum for faculty to connect with fellow faculty across different departments and colleges, and create collaborations that could result in new interdisciplinary research projects. The session will begin by asking each faculty participant to introduce themselves, and briefly describe their current research focus and future research aspirations.

There are two “ground rules” for this introductory phase: 1) You may only use one PowerPoint slide (template will be provided); and 2) you may speak for no longer than two minutes (time limit will be enforced). During these two minutes, the faculty in the audience will get a glimpse of you and your work, which may spark collaborative research ideas that can be explored further in one on one conversations.

We in CALS, and specifically under the umbrella of the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative, have found this meeting format to be extremely effective in producing inter-college collaborations that have ultimately led to funded research projects between colleges that would not have otherwise occurred. The “1-slide/2-minute” format keeps the session moving forward at a nice pace to keep all engaged and allows for more time for conversations among faculty.

We will be sending more detailed information (including the slide template), as well as a link to RSVP for the event in advance of the November 13th date. For now, we ask that you please hold this date and time on your calendar.

If you need more immediate information, feel free to contact Geoff Bock (grbock@ncsu.edu), or Steve Briggs (spbriggs@ncsu.edu).