People often picture scientists working away in isolation – scribbling notes at a desk or mixing liquids over a flame. In reality, science is very much about being a part of a team. We meet and talk about how we think things work. We work together to figure out how we can test to see if our ideas are right or wrong. Then, we test those ideas experimentally.

It often takes a group of people with different skills to do the experiments. In brain imaging (my line of research), physicists work with physiotherapists, medical doctors, computer scientists, mathematicians, and psychologists, among others. It’s exciting to experience so many perspectives on the same problem.

The sharing of knowledge from different areas was really brought home to me when I found this drawing on a chalkboard in my lab. It seems that Justin, a neuroscience undergraduate on my team, was teaching Jon, a Masters student in physics, about how neurons work. This is new stuff for Jon, who has worked on other problems in physics in the past. But as a physicist, he already has a deep understanding of what is meant by membrane “potential”!

It’s great to see that scientific discovery isn’t a solitary experience.