The Inter-Departmental Science Workshop is held by the Research and Scientific Support and the Science Operations Departments with the support of the Faculty. The idea of this meeting is to showcase and discuss the full sweep of science being done within both Departments.

The first workshops took place on August 2008 at ESTEC and on September 2009 at ESAC. The third, 2010 edition, took place in Volendam (The Netherlands) on 11-12 November 2010. The fourth, 2011 edition, was near Toledo (Spain) on 23-25 November 2011 and this year's workshop, the fifth in this series returned to Volendam in the Netherlands on 8 and 9 November 2012.

The workshop was organised by the Science Organising Committee with the support of Clare Bingham and Alba Alcol as well as from the Department Heads and the Faculty Councils of ESAC and ESTEC.