The thirty Welsh Crucible participants were reunited in Aberystwyth on the 9th and 10th of June for the second Welsh Crucible Lab. This two day event focused on collaboration and building research networks, with the group working together to examine the grand challenges currently faced by researchers in Wales, as well as looking at the different ways of popularising academic research. Professor Chris Thomas from Aberystwyth University delivered a keynote address on ‘Slow Science’, drawing on his experiences of working with communities in Tanzania as part of his interdisciplinary research into the transmission of infectious diseases.