Reflecting on Science Week 2018

Each year, IRRI schedules a week in which scientists can listen in for a week of presentations regarding the achievements of different groups from the past year and to discuss future activities in front their peers.

This year, however, what we used to call GRISP Science Forum and Common Week, had topics that focused more inwardly and was aptly called IRRI Science Week. For the past year, IRRI has undergone major changes. Management promised that the change process would be "muddy", asking all staff to be involved in the process wholeheartedly. This year, it was like a check-in with staff to see how the change process has been faring... hopefully, the mud has settled quite a bit and people could get some clarity.

First off, there were movements of laboratories from one building to another. I was expecting that my group would be relocated from Hemmi Building, but so far, we haven't budged. Then, there were staff reassignments: some staff were going to be out-posted to country offices. But the biggest change of all was the organisational restructuring that IRRI has undergone. It used to have discipline-based divisions, with people working in multidisciplinary teams through projects. The change in structure was stimulated by the idea that a different structure may allow people from different teams to work even better and more efficiently. The organisational restructuring is also expected to make resource management more efficient... potentially closing down leaks, increasing volume and velocity of flow... yes, it sounds so similar to what I used to do with size exclusion chromatography and capillary electrophoresis. 

And so because the topics were mostly focused on the changes that the institute was (and still is) undergoing, there were fewer talks about the meaty science stuff. Most of the talks were on building strategies and tactics that would define each platform (what divisions are called these days)... forward-thinking; big picture; impact-oriented.

After the string of days of listening to presentations, Kuya Gani, the photographer chanced upon me having a snack at the cafeteria. He needed clips from different people on what we thought about the week and what we were looking forward to for the rest of the year.

I haven't processed everything at that point and I felt like I was back in the media training course I underwent almost five years ago! I had to think up of a media-savvy response in under 30 seconds; I literally was chewing on food as I was drafting a response for this ambush interview.

Behind-the-scenes photo by Cindy

Change. That was the overarching theme of Science Week, methinks. And that's what I am expecting for the rest of the year.