We are fortunate to have won Gundula’s cooperation after we learned of her work as Director of the R3 Center for Innovation in Science Education (R3ISE) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The R3ISE center produces doctoral, masters, and certificate programs aiming to bring more critical thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, and practical ethics considerations into graduate student training in biomedicine, health, engineering, and technology. The R3ISE team strives to educate broadly interested scientists who are not only technically proficient but particularly open-minded, reflective, creative and skilled in scientific reasoning, problem-solving and innovative research design.

Several distinct themes became particularly palpable in our discussion with Gundula: we spoke of curiosity’s role to apply academic skills and transfer conceptual insights across topical borders to see how they might help in other contexts seems critical in fortifying an open and engaging academic mind. We discussed the role of imagination in unlocking and comprehending why things are they way they are. How much and what kind of a perspective shift does it take to finally understand the most challenging question and start working towards an answer? Finally, we explored the interconnection between rigour, reproducibility, and responsibility.