Wanted: Pioneers for UZH Space's First Interdisciplinary Pitch Lab

UZH Space invites 10–20 early career researchers across UZH’s research universe (natural sciences, life sciences, engineering, social sciences, and humanities) for a one-day (8h) workshop designed to do three things:

• get people from wildly different fields talking,
• build a common language across those disciplines, and
• turn sparks of shared curiosity into concrete interdisciplinary project ideas ready to be pitched and developed further.

Why?

Space research is a highly interdisciplinary domain. Many of its scientific, technological, environmental, societal, legal, and ethical challenges cannot be addressed by any single discipline alone. With expertise spanning the natural and life sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, law, and beyond, UZH has enormous potential to approach these challenges from different perspectives. This workshop aims to bring that expertise into one room and explore what can emerge when these perspectives meet.

Who is it for?

PhD candidates and postdocs from all disciplines at UZH - whether or not your research is currently related to space. What matters is curiosity about other fields and an interest in exploring how your expertise, methods, and research questions could contribute to new interdisciplinary challenges in the space domain.

The workshop primarily targets PhD candidates and postdocs, but highly motivated Bachelor’s and Master’s students are also welcome to apply. If you are curious about interdisciplinary space research and keen to contribute your perspective, we would be happy to hear from you.

What to expect:

During this workshop, you will meet researchers whose work may look very different from your own. You will not be tested on your own field. You’ll be asked to explain it to someone who has never heard of it, listen to research questions wildly different from your own, and find unexpected overlap between “what I study” and “what they study”. By the end of the day, the small mixed-discipline teams will have distilled a shared spark of an idea into a 3-5 minute pitch. The best three to four pitches will be selected for presentation at a future UZH Space event, and the teams will be encouraged and supported by UZH Space to continue working together and develop their ideas into concrete research initiatives.

Key questions addressed in the workshop include: Where do the questions and methods of my discipline overlap with those of other space-related fields at UZH? How do we turn a loosely shared interest into a concrete, pitchable research idea? Participants will move from mutual introduction, through joint “sense-making” and idea generation, to producing a polished team pitch.

Methods/Tools
The workshop combines short interactive games, facilitated group activities and individual workbook exercises  to build shared vocabulary, structured ideation methods (collect, cluster, choose) to surface promising project intersections, and Explainables' signature storytelling and message-distilling coaching to shape team ideas into confident, audience-ready pitches.

Requirements
Software and electronic devices to work on your presentation are required during the course.

What you will gain:

The best three to four pitches will be selected for presentation at a future UZH Space event. Promising teams will be supported by UZH Space in continuing their collaboration and developing their ideas into concrete research initiatives. All participants will receive a certificate of attendance.
 

Registration deadline: 30.09.2026 at 5pm.

Final date and location will be confirmed on 30 September 2026, based on the date with the highest participant availability.

Coffee breaks with snacks and beverages will be provided.

hosted by:
Jean-Noël Mettler, UZH Space

Facilitator:
Daniel Angerhausen, Senior Scientist , SETI Institute
Co-founder, www.explainables.org
 

Questions regarding the workshop can be addressed to:
Jean-Noël Mettler, UZH Space