Twelve Years, One Community: Reflections on Building Research Networks

For the last 12 years, the Swiss planetary science community has come together to form the NCCR PlanetS – a national collaboration of 4 universities all working on the topic, and representing over 80 Millions euros of funding from the universities and the Swiss National Science Foundation. In those twelve years, I’ve had many roles within this network – scientist, communication and outreach specialist, and report coordinator, giving me a great overview of the effort to grow a community together.

As the NCCR PlanetS is coming to an end, and as the community is coming together to create the Swiss Institute for Planetary Sciences (SIPS), it is the ideal time to reflect on the community building measures we implemented in the scientific and communication domains and assess their efficiency. I will also discuss what I would do differently if we would start again, or what additional initiatives I would implement nowadays to foster the genuine sense of belonging for its members.