Before Frozen in Time and Space – Our SPARK Journey

It all started with a shared interest in the preservation of female fertility. Which is a complex and societal challenge. Emerging techniques for oocyte(OO), embryo (EM) and ovarian tissue (OT) preservation offer potential benefits not only for human reproductive health but also for biodiversity conservation. We started with an interdisciplinary team with expertise in assisted reproduction, molecular and cryobiology, bioengineering, ethics, and public perception.

Our goal was to bridge existing knowledge gaps and establish a network connecting diverse disciplines involved in fertility preservation. Recognizing female fertility preservation as a complex ecosystem, we took an holistic approach to address its various dimensions.

Through various meetings where we learned about each other’s disciplines and explored different ways of thinking, we become interested in focusing on the topic of cryopreservation in humans and animals and decided to involve the arts in our project. We organised a “call for art” (see next page) and received eight submissions, which will be featured in an itinerant exhibition in 2025. We are currently exploring collaborations with artists and designers to develop a public engagement activity that will provide a deeper and more meaningful understanding of people’s perspectives and values on cryopreservation in both humans and animals.

Foto of the team at the second Spark brainstorming meeting in May 2024

Team members: Marta de Ruijter-Villani (UU), Julie Lamy (WUR), Marieke Hollestelle (UMCU), Franck Meijboom (UU), Koen Kramer (UU) Alessia Longoni (UMCU), Riccardo Levato (UMCU), Efrat Gommeh (independent), Hellen Dawo (UU).

SPARK Journey – Personal experiences

Marieke 

“When Marta approached our department to collaborate on female fertility, I was immediately excited! But the SPARK initiative took it to another level. I truly enjoyed connecting with researchers from different universities and diverse research backgrounds.

I had read and heard a lot about the value of interdisciplinary research, but experiencing it firsthand has been incredibly inspiring. SPARK creates the space for a team to build meaningful connections, understand each other’s interests and perspectives, and discover what ignites their curiosity. Everyone has been eager to learn from one another while engaging in deep, thought-provoking discussions.

We are constantly inspired to think outside the box, exploring the vast possibilities within our research interests.

As an early-career researcher, SPARK has given me a valuable new network, fostered creative thinking and collaboration, and allowed me to explore my own research direction independently of my research department.”

Koen

“I joined this project near the end of the SPARK-phase, and I was immediately struck by the good-spirited and constructive exchanges going on. Directly cooperating on a topic of mutual interest with a range of disciplines proved less challenging and more stimulating than I expected. I hope we can continue this interactive learning process in the next phase.”

Julie

“Marta and I had already started talking about collaboration between Utrecht University and Wageningen University and Research when she suggested we attend the SPARK training together. As an early career researcher my network in the Netherlands was rather small and I was seeking new collaborations and projects in animal reproduction and cryopreservation, so I did join. Along the training, the idea of the team came along and everything slowly came together. Working with this SPARK team has been a source of great inspiration and growth. It was very stimulating and refreshing not to know what to expect in the beginning and even more so to be able to think out of the box and look at female reproductive health and cryopreservation from different but connected perspectives. What I find most exciting is that we are continuously learning from each other and building knowledge towards new approaches of research and outreach. As expected, working with the SPARK team has allowed for my network to grow, working now with researchers from UU and UMCU. Moreover, all the tools we use to learn how to work with each other and to make everyone feel included and heard in our team, will also help me in knowing myself better as well as my research approach.”

Marta

“I had followed several Cuco workshops in the last 3 years and I was fascinated by the open climate within Cuco and by the several tools that Cuco developed in the years to facilitate collaborations between researchers with a completely different back ground. For this reason I decided to invest in myself and start a SPARK journey. I truly loved the workshops we followed by the first part of the Spark journey, they were refreshing and. At the end of the training, together with other 2 participants we decided to continue this journey with the SPARK grant and approached other researchers with different backgrounds, to make our team truly inter-disciplinary. The Spark grant gave me an opportunity to truly experience how much inter-disciplinarian is enriching and give rise to new ideas that could have never been thought within a single discipline. I experience the spark journey also extremely exhausting, this journey truly forced me in stepping out from my preconceptions and finding a new out-of-the-box way of approaching problems. However it was worth all the hard work we have put in it: I can say that “I now feel comfortable in being uncomfortable” and I work with an amazing multidisciplinary network of people interesting in fertility preservation.”