In January 8, more than one hundred people attended the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Research Retreat at UW Medicine South Lake Union. The day was a mix of presentations, breakout sessions and Idea Development Workshops (IDWs) followed by our first-ever Research Retreat Reception. The goal of the retreat is to foster collaboration and community among our researchers, support promising new ideas, and share knowledge and expertise, all in service of improving the health of the public. Next year, we are excited to open the retreat to senior research staff in addition to research faculty and research-focused trainees.
Our keynote this year was Carole Palmer, PhD, MLS, Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the iSchool, who spoke about how to participate in the data sharing ecosystem by using releasable, reproducible, and reusable data. A large portion of the day was spent on small-group Breakout Sessions ranging from Sequential, Multiple Assignment, Randomized Trials (SMARTs) study designs (led by John Fortney, PhD, and Aaron Norr, PhD) to Clinical Trials with High Risk Participants and/or Effectiveness Settings (led by Kate Comtois, PhD) to a panel session on Mentor/Mentee relationships (led by Jesse Markman, MD, MBA, and John Neumaier, MD, PhD). The Idea Development Workshops (IDWs) were again a positive experience with survey responders indicating they were useful, active, intellectually exciting and fun. The IDWs provided deep discussions, led to new connections among faculty and (hopefully) helped ready promising new ideas for funding.
We’d like to thank the terrific planning committee who worked hard to create the day’s agenda: Pam Collins, Kate Comtois, PhD, Christopher DeCou, PhD, Nina De Lacy, MD, MBA, Alison Laing, Andrew Saxon, MD, Tracy Simpson, MD, Rebecca Sladek and Jürgen Unützer, MD. If you are a faculty member interested in helping plan next year’s retreat, please contact Alison Laing (alaing2@uw.edu). We want to continue to make the retreat valuable, engaging and productive and, to accomplish that, we need your input!
