Kick-Off Meeting Survey

Kick-off Meeting (Autumn 2025)

A three-day virtual meeting on Teams, with one hour of discussion per day to accommodate our international team. This meeting will serve as an opportunity for team members to introduce themselves, share their research interests in whichever format they are comfortable with, and for the steering scientists and the chair to summarise mutual interests at the end. The scientific questions outlined in the Scientific Rationale will also be discussed, and a plan for the first in-person meeting will be developed.

1. Kick-Off Meeting Date

2. A Preliminary Schedule for the Kick-Off Meeting

A preliminary meeting time has been proposed. We apologise to colleagues based in East Asia—please understand the challenge of coordinating a cross-continental meeting across multiple time zones.

You are not expected to attend all three sessions. If you are unable to join every meeting, I will do my best to schedule those with limited availability to present on the final day. That way, you can still take part in the summary discussions and hear about plans for the first in-person meeting.

If you are unable to attend the kick-off meeting at all, you are very welcome to share a short written introduction about yourself and your research interests. It would be especially helpful to mention which of the broad scientific questions outlined in the Scientific Rationale you are most interested in exploring collaboratively. We will compile and circulate these introductions to help foster connections within the group.

If a meeting were scheduled on 10 Oct, we would meet at the following local time:

• UTC (GMT) 15:00 on 10 Oct
• BST (UTC+1, e.g., Coventry) 16:00 on 10 Oct
• CEST (UTC+2, e.g., Geneva) 17:00 on 10 Oct
• CST (UTC+8, e.g., Beijing) 23:00 on 10 Oct
• PDT (UTC-7, e.g., Los Angeles) 08:00 on 10 Oct
• MDT (UTC-6, e.g., Salt Lake City) 09:00 on 10 Oct
• CDT (UTC-5, e.g., Chicago) 10:00 on 10 Oct
• EDT (UTC-4, e.g., Boston) 11:00 on 10 Oct

3. Early-Career Researchers

We are able to accommodate two early-career researchers with the same level of funding as core members, and up to two additional early-career researchers without funding.

If you wish to propose someone, please let us know so we can discuss it—particularly if multiple core members are proposing candidates. In that case, we will need to coordinate and allocate the available funding accordingly.

Note that any early-career researchers in your group who you think can benefit from our scientific discussions can join our kick-off meetings and future collaboration meetings remotely.

4. Are you a carer?

If you have caring responsibilities during the in-person meetings in Beijing, such as child care, please feel free to let me know in confidence by email. I will be happy to check with ISSI-Beijing to see how we can best support you and ensure your experience is as smooth and enjoyable as possible.

5. Other Minutes

Do you wish to add other minutes to the discussion at our kick-off meetings?