How to encourage active collaboration in particle physics research?

Question

I am looking for ways to improve collaboration between a theory and an experimental group at the same University. A grant has been awarded to a collaboration lead by two seniors from either of the groups, and there are occasionally some seminars occurring. But the main goal to produce concrete outcomes, preferably involving PhDs and postdocs in the groups, have not succeeded so far. It is partly because of the peculiar timelines in the experimental groups, they are part of HUGE experimental collaborations who have rigorous methods of conducting analysis and publishing at some point later, and for PhDs and postdocs, this means that such projects are often completed after their tenure in the groups.

There have been tries to keep up short but regular 'youngsters' meetings' for such collaboration to occur over the last year but there have been no response from the experimental side. If you have/have had some sort of structure in place for your research groups where two groups researching on different approaches have collaborated and have produced some outcomes, please share your hacks.

Answer 1

My experience with all the collaborations so far: they fail badly if they're forced (as a structure). First, you get motivation to collaborate, and that means specific problems or goals to act upon. Bryan is right - if you have specific, actionable items to produce within the collaboration, that allows for bringing people from different groups together and think about them.

The format for this collaboration comes after - it may (and probably will) be regular meetings, maybe in different setups: it may make sense to bring the theory group to the experiment once in a while so they get some feel for what's going on there; it will also make sense to do blackboard meetings. But first of all, you need to gain a bit of initial traction to kick it off.

Since you seem to be coming from the theoretic group side and want to induce some interest from the experimental one, you may start by figuring out their unknowns. What are the problems they are dealing with? Maybe some smart calculations would simplify the experimental design or you would take in their data and design cuts (although it's usually lying in the experimental field). Alternatively, do the opposite, which is the normal procedure for physics: find out what your unknowns are and ask them if they can measure some of that experimentally and to what precision. It's hard to tell without getting more into detail, but the core point still stands: find specific items you both can and want to discuss.