Below is a letter sent to my institute in January 2026 after a year in post as Head of The Institute for Bioengineering. It serves a purpose as an open letter on my reflections of 2025.
Dear colleagues,
Welcome back. I hope the winter break brought you a great deal of rest and restoration.
As we return to the Institute in early January, I’ve been reflecting on where we find ourselves—not at a beginning, but at a midpoint.
We are halfway through the academic year, deep in the season of winter, in what the writer Katherine May calls the practice of “wintering.” This is not a time for dramatic New Year resolutions or beginning a new sprint into relentless productivity, but rather for something more subtle and, I would argue, more essential: contemplation, continuation, and care.
Nature, which inspires all of my work in bioinspired engineering, offers us clear lessons about this season. Trees are not dead in winter—they are dormant, conserving energy, their roots quietly working beneath the frozen ground in a state of “resting readiness”. Animals hibernate not out of weakness, but as an adaptive strategy for survival and renewal. Seeds lie silent in the soil, gathering strength for growth that is not yet visible. This period of dormancy is not passive—it is essential. Without the rest of winter there can be no bloom in the spring.
As researchers in Bioengineering, we understand better than most that the strategies employed by nature are often more sophisticated than our human systems. Janine Benyus, in her foundational work on biomimicry, identified nine principles that govern how nature operates—principles like “nature uses only the energy it needs,” “nature fits form to function,” and critically, “nature taps the power of limits”. Winter is nature demonstrating this last principle: by accepting limits, by retreating and conserving, organisms prepare themselves for future abundance. This is not just a principle for engineering design; it is a principle for sustainable human practice.
The origin of biomimicry, as my friend Dr Julian Vincent noted, is really just the quest of science itself—careful observation and description of the natural world. And so I invite us all to observe: What can we learn from the season we’re in? How might the patterns of winter inform not just our research questions, but our approach to the work itself?
I’ve been in post as Head of Institute for a year now, and it’s important to me to reflect on the last year, and to continue my approach of aggressive optimism: we have extraordinary opportunities ahead of us.
• Our new estate for bioengineering research is providing a new collaborative space for innovation and facilitating serendipity. The move, facilitated by RIS and the Estates Team, went very smoothly and I thank you all for your collaboration and positive attitude to the New Ways Of Working (NWOW) experiment.
• Our collective research activity spans from implantable biomedical sensors to advanced robotics inspired by animal movement, from engineering biology meeting process engineering to the mechanics of implantable prostheses. We are doing world-class research across the breadth of Bioengineering and with researchers from all four engineering disciplines, our breadth is our strength.
• We’ve launched the new MSc in Biomedical Engineering and welcomed our first cohort of students onto the programme. This shared activity with Heriot-Watt university is strengthening our links via ERPE and is helping to build our case for REF.
• “The Purge” was a huge success. It was wonderful to see everyone pulling together to help push our research labs into a clean, tidy, safe space where we can enjoy working together. Our shared achievement of the Silver Sustainable Labs certification– lead by Mark and the technical services team – showcases our commitment to continuous improvement and maintenance of exceptionally high standards.
• We’ve formed a new Health and Safety Committee as well as leading on the establishment of the School-wide GM and Biological Safety Committee. The Institute is providing the leadership for biosafety and recognising that every one of the seven institutes in our school now has some bio-research within it.
• We’re fostering entrepreneurship and systems thinking, working to prevent silos through shared research challenges. Prof Fillipo Menolascina is going to chair our new group on Entrepreneurship and Impact, with the kick off on the 14th January. We also now have a shared vision for the Institute which all academic staff have co-authored.
• We’ve had some changes to our staffing in 2025, Dr Lenny Nelson and his team moved over to Edinburgh Napier University, and we’ve welcomed new staff: Dr Ian Holland as Innovation Fellow, Prof Jim Schneider as a visiting academic. We’ve also welcomed entirely new people to the world with the arrival of three new babies for faculty members. We’ve hosted Prof John Rogers for the Milne Lectures, and Dr Kathy Sullivan the astronaut and explorer.
There have been significant changes in the last year, changes to school process, staffing changes, cost-centres, budget holders and approvals. Changes to where we work, how we work, with whom we work. But through it all we’ve adapted, overcome, and we’re thriving. As Dr Ian Malcolm famously said: “Life finds a way.”
My ambitions for the institute are substantial. Implementing them will require our best thinking—not our busiest schedules. The research is clear: productivity and busyness are not the same thing. When we multitask and fragment our attention, we lose up to 40% of our productive time to mental switching costs. Deep work—sustained, focused, cognitively demanding work—is what drives meaningful progress in research and innovation. Most people can sustain only about four hours of genuine deep work per day. The rest must be devoted to restoration, to the kind of rest that makes deep work possible.
I want to encourage all of us—faculty, researchers, postdocs, and students alike—to use this winter period intentionally. The long dark evenings that characterise January are not a burden to endure, but an invitation. An invitation to slow down, to think deeply, to read widely, to reflect on where our research might lead us. The darkness of winter can provide the space for ideas to germinate, for connections to form, for the kind of strategic thinking that is impossible when we are rushing from task to task.
Self-care in academia is not self-indulgent—it is essential infrastructure. The evidence shows that mindful self-care practices directly reduce anxiety, depression, and stress. When we care for ourselves, we are better able to care for our students, to collaborate with our colleagues, and to produce work of genuine quality and impact. Rest is not something we earn through productivity; it is the foundation that makes meaningful productivity possible.
As we continue through this academic year, I encourage you to:
• Protect time for deep work. Schedule blocks of uninterrupted time for your most cognitively demanding tasks—strategic thinking, writing, complex problem-solving. Treat these blocks as sacred. This is where breakthrough thinking happens.
• Embrace strategic rest. Follow the example of dormant seeds and hibernating animals. Nature rewards cooperation, but it also honours dormancy. Rest is not the absence of work; it is preparation for future growth. Build genuine breaks into your days and weeks.
• Practice continuation, not reinvention. We are midway through the year. This is a time to sustain the work already underway, to nurture ongoing projects, to deepen existing collaborations. Nature fits form to function—and right now, our function is steady continuation.
• Observe with a scientist’s eye. The quest of science begins with observation. Notice how nature navigates this season—through dormancy, through conservation of energy, through patient preparation. Ask yourself: what am I observing about my own patterns of work and rest? What adjustments might better align with sustainable practice?
• Think systemically about our shared challenges. Systems thinking is central to how we approach complex problems in bioengineering. Apply this same lens to our community. How do our individual wellbeing and our collective capacity reinforce each other? How can we structure our work to prevent silos and enhance collaboration?
• Support one another. Wintering, as Katherine May notes, is not purely solitary—it benefits from community. Check in with your colleagues, share insights and encouragement, and create space for the kind of supportive connections that sustain us through challenging periods.
The light will return—it already is, minute by minute, day by day. But we need not rush toward spring. There is wisdom and power in this dark, quiet season if we allow ourselves to experience it fully.
I am deeply committed to establishing our Institute as the leader in translating scientific discoveries into practical applications—in health technology, in sustainable solutions, and increasingly, in technologies that work both in space and in resource-limited settings on Earth. I am enthusiastic about the team we’re building and the real-world impacts we’ll create together. But this work is too important to do while depleted. It requires our full capacities—intellectual, creative, and human. It requires us to work with the wisdom of nature not against it.
We have tremendous opportunities ahead. Let us approach them not with frantic energy, but with the kind of deep, strategic thinking that winter makes possible. Let us observe, reflect, and prepare—just as the natural world around us is doing.
Thank you for all that you contribute to this Institute. I am grateful to be part of this community, and I look forward to what we will accomplish together—not through constant busyness, but through thoughtful, sustained, deeply human work.
I’m looking forward to seeing you all at our shared IBioE/IMT party in a few weeks time.
With warm regards and best wishes for 2026,
Professor Adam A. Stokes