do you work alone or in a group?

Question: do you work alone or in a group?

Asked by bethjames to Alexandra, Dean, Jess, Luisa, Sian on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: Scientist.
- Sian Foch-Gatrell answered on 17 Jun 2010:
  
  I work in a big group of 17 people. Most of my work is with only one other person though Yvette (in the genes section)
- Dean Whittaker answered on 17 Jun 2010:
  
  I spend about 50 percent of my time working alone, 25 percent working with my direct group, discussing and doing things together (this week that’s been almost every day all day while we prepare for 4 experiments coming up soon) and 25 percent working with other people from other institutions – Montpellier, Bristol, Chicago, Edinburgh, Oxford and RAL labs in didcot. Everything my group does is linked. So our other PhD student and I are both working on high pressure stuff and make samples together and go to the same experiments, help each other out etc. We all help each other out and we all learn from each other.
- Jessica Housden answered on 17 Jun 2010:
  
  As part of a big team, but I have certain parts that are my responsibilty, or other people need me to do for them. For example, at the moment it is my job to work out the mass of the satellite, which changes all the time due to design changes. So, I rely on other people to let me know what they are changing. I also write documents justifying the design – so why we have chosen what we have; what else we considered. I need to make sure that as decisions are made I know why so I can write about it – but I’ll also ask people lots of questions. then, often I’ll decide that t here is an area we need to focus on, so I might get a lot of people together to talk about all the options and how that part of the design will work.
  
  My team is made up of about 20 people in the UK and then a similar number in Germany and France. The European Space Agency are paying for the spacecraft, so they have a big team there, and the Japanese Space Agency are building one of the instruments that measures the clouds, so they will also have a big team.
- Luisa Ostertag answered on 17 Jun 2010:
  
  I work as part of a research group. I found that in science it is really essential to work together – each member of the group works on a smaller part of a big project and together we might be able to solve some of the related questions. It is also important to collaborate with scientists from other areas (statisticians for example) and other institutes to maximise the outcome. I think that’s really cool as I love discussing my work with other scientists, it very often inspires me and leads me to new ideas and a different way of thinking.
  
  I should add: in my every day routine I will do a lot of stuff on my own (lab work, data analysis on the computer, writing or reading articles) but whenever I need support or just want the opinion of someone else there are plenty of people around who are normally quite happy to have a chat.
- Alexandra Kamins answered on 17 Jun 2010:
  
  My project as a whole always is part of a group. A lot of my day-to-day stuff I do physically by myself, but I’m always part of a team that I can ask for help, or who are contributing different pieces of information and research. Most of science is done as part of big collaborations (groups!), with lots of people from all different places and fields working on the same set of questions.

Question: do you work alone or in a group?

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