Does your work let you meet specialists in all fields to assist in your research? And do you collaborate often or does

Question: Does your work let you meet specialists in all fields to assist in your research? And do you collaborate often or does it not happen very often?
- Keywords:
  collaboration,
  specialist,
  teamwork
Asked by cast499had on 30 Apr 2024.
- Michael C Macey answered on 30 Apr 2024:
  
  As a lecturer who works in the field of astrobiology I get to meet and work with specialists across multiple fields very often – last week we had a major meeting of Global Space Agencies and research institutes to discuss how to protect other planets from contamination and how to safely bring back martian samples.
  
  In my day to day work I collaborate with geologists, chemists and physicists, as the study of possible life beyond Earth needs a multidisciplinary approach.
- Alan Koh answered on 30 Apr 2024:
  
  Yes I meet specialist in all fields and I collaborate very often. In fact, all the different research projects that I am on have a certain degree of collaboration. Collaboration allows one research to progress further and faster.
- Emma Weir answered on 30 Apr 2024:
  
  Yes! I work mainly in cell and molecular biology in the lab, but I work with clinicans (doctors who look after our patients), bioinformaticians (experts in looking at data and analysis), imaging experts (who help us take great microscope images) and even people who run MRI brain scans. And probably many more…
  When studying diseases its important to have lots of specialties involved.
- Michael Schubert answered on 27 Jun 2024:
  
  It definitely does! I meet all kinds of specialists and experts and talk to them about their work (and sometimes my own as well). In the last few weeks, I’ve spoken to epidemiologists, archaeologists, psychiatrists, pathologists, neurologists, computer programmers, and more!
  
  Nowadays, most research is very collaborative. I can’t think of the last time I saw a research project completed by a single person! I often collaborate in my work. Almost all of my research is collaborative; my communications work can sometimes be done solo, but not always (and the collaborations are the most fun!).
- Zoe Vance answered on 8 Jul 2024:
  
  I meet and speak to people with all kinds of expertise! Within the field of virus evolution and surveillance we have mathematicians, computer scientists and medics all working together quite frequently along with people whose background is more biology focused like me! Then you can also add in people I meet through public engagement/science communication work, which is an even more diverse group again.
  
  The work I do is quite collaborative now, but during my PhD most of my work was solo – I was primarily working on testing interesting ideas using datasets that are publicly available, which didn’t need a lot of input from other people although getting multiple viewpoints always improves a research project. The work I do now is much more applied and I feel this kind of work requires a lot more collaboration, it would be impossible to try and get something that is actually going to be used in the real world to help in medical decisions off the ground on your own and also having data generated for you is very important. I only do computational work so without my collaborators who actually generate the data from viruses I wouldn’t have a job!