Spring 2021 Collaborative Collision Line-Up

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce the Office of Research Development’s Spring 2021 Collaborative Collision line-up! Collaborative Collision is an interdisciplinary networking program designed to connect faculty with complementary interests, expertise, and resources, and launch new collaborative research programs that are well positioned to make breakthrough discoveries and compete for external funding. Collaborative Collision has grown tremendously popular over the last few years, and each event regularly features up to 50 presentations from FSU’s research community, along with keynote presentations from university leaders, funding agency program officers, and other thought-leaders in interdisciplinary research topics. I hope to see you at one or both of this Spring’s events!

Collaborative Collision: Climate Solutions (Wednesday, March 3rd, 2pm-5pm) will focus on the technologies, practices, and policies needed to slow (and ultimately reverse) climate change, as well as the creative ways in which we can demonstrate its impact and inspire action and resilience. Developing climate solutions will require broad interdisciplinary perspectives from university researchers, while implementation of these solutions will be driven by our future graduates.

In the spirit of encouraging these broad interdisciplinary perspectives, I am also pleased to announce that Collaborative Collision: Climate Solutions will be the first to extend an invitation to our colleagues at Florida A&M University. FAMU has a strong climate research community, particularly in agriculture and with under-resourced communities. These strengths are highly complementary to FSU’s, and we welcome the opportunity to increase collaborations between our institutions.

Collaborative Collision: Health (April 6th, 7th, and 8th) marks a major milestone for the Office of Research Development. In April 2016, ORD organized the first campus-wide interdisciplinary networking program at Florida State University. Five years and 15 events later, Collaborative Collision has brought together hundreds of members of the FSU research community, helped launch countless new collaborative research teams, and better positioned FSU to make breakthrough discoveries, compete for external funding, and advance creativity and innovation.

Please join us in celebrating this milestone by revisiting the very first Collaborative Collision: Health. As a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, Health is perhaps the best example of the kind of convergent topic, with diverse disciplinary interests, that Collaborative Collision was designed to address. Our 2021 iteration of Collaborative Collision: Health will be spread across three days, each with a different focus: April 6th (Physical Health), 7th (Social Health), and 8th (Mental Health).

Registration for both events is now open at research.fsu.edu/CollaborativeCollision.

If you have any questions, please contact Mike Mitchell in the Office of Research Development.

Laurel Fulkerson

Interim Vice President for Research