Late in November 2021, on 25th of November 2021 to be precise, we formally launched our Network Plus with our partners – due to Covid restrictions it was an online event – however that doesn’t mean it was any less informative. The network team introduced themselves, and the network lead, Christopher James, introduced the aims and ambitions of the network (all of this information is available on our website by the way, so please do take a look).
The project partners present, with backgrounds in academia, industry and clinical practices, introduced themselves to each other over a number of sessions and we then introduced Mural, the online platform that is sort-of an online whiteboard, “where everyone contributes equally and hard problems are solved faster.” We will be using this platform to facilitate discussions prior to and during Funding Sandpits for example, and will be letting all partners know when the Bionics Space and Impact Space are established – more about this in a future newsletter, so please do watch this space. There will be an article on Mural appearing on the website website soon too.
The launch was a great opportunity to meet the diverse set of people that make up the Network and discuss the challenges we face in our respective fields. We identified that we share many of the same fundamental issues. This bodes well for solutions generated by the Network having broad reaching impact across bionics tech development.
a Project partner from Industry
We ended the meeting by having an initial discussion with the partners about emergent topics or themes as priorities in the Bionics space – lively discussions were had and we even broke out our first Mural to capture the discussions. We will be analysing the outcome of these discussions and will be using the material to inform what we do as the network progresses.
I found the Bionics+ launch event extremely informative and useful. The discussions during the networking sessions were stimulating and contributed to paving the way for the creation of a Bionics UK community.
A project partner from academia
All in all it was a great start to the network, we hope that we will be meeting up soon, perhaps even face-to-face Covid-19 permitting, stay safe everyone and we will be in contact again very soon.
Christopher (Bionics+ PI)