During a lunch break a few years ago, BRI PhD students thought about what their work had in common. This brainstorming set forth a collaborative research work at the BRI that resulted in the recently published paper “Biosphere Reserves as Model Regions for Transdisciplinarity? A Literature Review”, in the journal Sustainability Science. The student-led team includes 5 PhD students, 3 BIOM students, 2 post-docs and 3 professors.