For two days in July the RoboPhysics Laboratory moved out of the department and into Laino Borgo, on the Lao river in the Pollino National Park.
The format was deliberately simple: long tables under the trees, paper and markers instead of screens, and a schedule with enough space in it to let conversations run. The sessions asked the questions that never quite fit into an ordinary week — how the group works together, what each research line needs next, and what the lab should look like a few years from now. PhD students, postdocs and MSc students all took the floor, which is harder to arrange in a corridor than around a table by a river.
Between sessions came the other half of the point. The group ran the rapids of the Lao with Pollino Rafting, walked up to the waterfall, and ate together at the long table well into the evening. Sharing a raft turns out to be a fast way to learn how a team distributes effort.
The retreat has become a fixed appointment in the life of the lab: a way of remembering that a research group is a group of people first, and that some of the best thinking happens a long way from the instruments.
