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    Uploaded by: Professor Itai Yanai
    Course title: 1. Introduction to Night Science
    Type of teaching: workshop
    Target student level: graduate, postdoctoral
    Description of teaching material: The formal scientific method tells you how to rigorously and objectively test a hypothesis. But where do hypotheses come from in the first place? Posing fruitful new questions, having ideas for novel hypotheses, and inventing new experimental technologies all require scientific creativity. Itai Yanai (New York University) and Martin Lercher (HHU Düsseldorf) have been exploring this hidden side of the scientific process in editorials and a podcast. In this workshop, participants learn and practice different tools for the generation of scientific ideas. Sessions explore, for example, how anthropomorphic language unlocks intuitive brain capacities; how new questions can be identified by honing in on contradictions; how a hypothesis can be a liability for making new discoveries; and how ideas can be imported and exported across research fields. Each of the sessions is integrated with exercises, allowing the participants to practice the tools for creative scientific explorations. The workshop is targeted at young researchers across the natural sciences and mathematics. But it is also highly relevant to seasoned investigators who are interested in a deeper understanding and further development of their scientific creativity.
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    Uploaded by: Professor Itai Yanai
    Course title: 2. Improvisational science
    Type of teaching: workshop
    Target student level: graduate, postdoctoral
    Description of teaching material: Improvisational science: Borrowing concepts from improvisational theater – including the “yes, and” rule – we discuss the mechanics of ‘talking science’ and explore the creative powers unlocked through discussing ideas with colleagues, highlighting the roles of encouragement and a suspension of criticism.
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    Uploaded by: Professor Itai Yanai
    Course title: 3. The two languages of science
    Type of teaching: workshop
    Target student level: graduate, postdoctoral
    Description of teaching material: The two languages of science: Science reporting is precise; but the language of discovery is different, it thrives on analogies, metaphors, and anthropomorphisms, which exploit intuitive powers that human brains evolved in response to social interactions. We discuss and exercise the intentional stance, the role of metaphors in reasoning, and translating between the two languages of ‘Day Science’ and ‘Night Science’.
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    Uploaded by: Professor Itai Yanai
    Course title: 4. What’s the question?
    Type of teaching: workshop
    Target student level: graduate, postdoctoral
    Description of teaching material: What is the question: A discovery is unexpected – an unknown unknown – and often does not fit neatly into a ‘knowledge gap’. A crucial step in many discoveries is the invention or the refocusing of a scientific question, and we explore ways in which questions may be formulated or rephrased to facilitate scientific progress.
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    Uploaded by: Professor Itai Yanai
    Course title: 5. The data-hypothesis conversation
    Type of teaching: workshop
    Target student level: graduate, postdoctoral
    Description of teaching material: The data-hypothesis conversation: The creative process thrives on an attitude that encourages exploration and speculation. Science relies on a back and forth between data and ideas, and the two corresponding modes of investigation overcome each other’s limitations.
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    Uploaded by: Professor Itai Yanai
    Course title: 6. Novel predictions arise from contradictions
    Type of teaching: workshop
    Target student level: graduate, postdoctoral
    Description of teaching material: Contradictions and Perseverance: Contradictions are often perceived as nuisances; but embracing them counteracts our natural human tendency for confirmation bias. We exercise how Night Science’s exploratory mode counteracts cognitive biases, opening the door to new insights and predictions that can profoundly alter the course of a project.
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    Uploaded by: Professor Itai Yanai
    Course title: 7. Interdisciplinarity and Renaissance minds
    Type of teaching: workshop
    Target student level: graduate, postdoctoral
    Description of teaching material: Interdisciplinarity & Renaissance minds: Disciplines and fields are historical constructions, representing just one way of clustering knowledge. We explore the ‘expert’s dilemma’ between disciplinary day science expertise and interdisciplinary night science creativity, which often involves the import or export of ideas and technologies between fields.
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    Uploaded by: Professor Itai Yanai
    Course title: 8. Science as a meta-puzzle
    Type of teaching: workshop
    Target student level: graduate, postdoctoral
    Description of teaching material: Science as a meta-puzzle. Science is puzzle-solving. We describe a system for classifying puzzles, appropriate both for human-made puzzles and for scientific projects. But nature’s puzzles are different from artificial puzzles in one crucial aspect: in an ongoing research project, you can never be sure what kind of a puzzle you are in. We discuss how conscious ‘puzzle-switching’ boosts our scientific creativity.
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    Uploaded by: Director, Center for Cancer Training Oliver Bogler
    Course title: Short Cartoons Introducing Night Science
    Type of teaching: Other
    Target student level: undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral
    Description of teaching material: Five Short cartoons introducing some concepts of Night Science and pointing to further learnings. YouTube playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz2rptafeqgxOTwb6TI_h_5sM0znXEAFS&si=RqiLpcKvsa-loKom
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    Uploaded by: Director, Center for Cancer Training Oliver Bogler
    Course title: Podcast Interview with Dr. Yanai and Dr. Lercher
    Type of teaching: Other
    Target student level: undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral
    Description of teaching material: An interview with Dr. Itai Yanai and Dr. Martin Lercher about their work in Night Science and their careers - an episode from "Inside Cancer Careers" from the National Cancer Institute; posted May 2nd, 2024. https://www.cancer.gov/grants-training/training/inside-cancer-careers
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    Uploaded by: Prof. Martin Lercher
    Course title: Night Science Workshop 2024
    Type of teaching: workshop
    Target student level: graduate, postdoctoral
    Description of teaching material: These are the slides used for a 1-day workshop on the creative scientific process at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf on 20. September 2024 as part of the 'Postdoc Appreciation Week'.
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