Over the course of their career, scientists develop into experts in their own field, with special and unique expertise that sets them apart from others. Given the complexity of today’s science and its development into many sub-disciplines, such specialization appears quite natural and and a common (since necessary) strategy. At the same time, many scientific breakthroughs have resulted from interdisciplinary collaboration between experts who, at first sight, live in disjoint worlds. This shows that looking across borders and joining forces is apparently also a promising path to success. However, such collaborations are neither easily established, nor kept alive – because of the different “scientific languages” spoken, the focus on one’s own research field (known as the “curse of knowledge”), and the hindsight bias. All of these complicate the communication between experts of different disciplines, hindering interdisciplinary collaborations.

The workshop “Sparking Interdisciplinary Collaborations”, led by Stefan Götze, addresses these challenges by providing a brief, though comprehensive overview on the sociological aspects regarding the interdisciplinary collaborations and introducing the concept of analogies to present the own work in a manner accessible to scientists from other disciplines as well as laymen. Participants then have the opportunity to practice these tools during the second part of the workshop by presenting their research and work to the other participants. Here, the participants not only have the opportunity to get to know about the work of other YIN members, but to identify common grounds and possibilities for interdisciplinary joint research activities, which in a next step may be supported by a YIN grant. Thus, by fostering the scientific exchange and out-of-the-box thinking, this workshop presents a highly valuable contribution to the YIN curriculum and the overall mission of YIN.