> "...with an open, freewheeling atmosphere more like a university department than a company." This gave me a pause. Which university department has "open, freewheeling atmosphere"?
That's my experience of every university math department I've ever been at. I always assumed that's also how non-math departments are but don't actually have any first-hand experience.
With a good PI, indeed it is, but similar to you, my experience is limited to neuroscience and biology departments.
I have a feeling that the further you get from math, the more restrictive the intellectual atmosphere becomes. Math, as a tool, makes it much easier to successfully and productively stray from consensus since the opposition would require "better math" (to put it crudely) to defeat it, and math is math. There's no way around it.
Mathematics departments are known for this. In my experience it is accurate. People take intellectual detours all the time to discuss interesting problems with colleagues, potentially unrelated to their main research focus.
The engineering lab I did my PhD in (the Ocean System's Lab at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh) fit this description.
One example: Myself and two colleagues took two weeks out of our studies to build an autonomous boat after we realised there was enough spare parts lying around the lab to do so. The idea originally came up over beers with the lab supervisor. I think he bet us £10 we couldn't do it in that amount of time.
I'm sure it varies a lot between labs and Universities, but it measures up to my experience.
