Context and setting The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires participation in scholarly activity and absence of scholarship is a common criticism in accreditation reviews.1 Education innovation programmes seek to balance clinical training with scholarship in order to strengthen trainees’ application of skills and thereby improve patient diagnosis, therapy and quality outcomes. Our workshop is designed to spark interns’ (first-year resident doctors) interest in scholarship while solidifying a foundation for innovation through internal medicine research. Why the idea was necessary Research has shown that doctors-in-training (resident doctors) who find mentors and complete scholarly projects exhibit greater satisfaction with the residency programme, show greater competitiveness in their fellowship applications and are more likely to take up careers in academic medicine. However, finding a suitable research mentor presents challenges, especially in large academic centres. We sought to increase interns’ knowledge about ongoing research activities, provide opportunities for interns to meet potential mentors and increase interns’ desire to engage in scholarly research. What was done Early in the interns’ first year, we introduced a 2-hour Speed Workshop for Interns and Faculty to Talk about research (SWIFT). All interns (n = 24) engaged in a series of 13 6-minute ‘dates’ with pre-selected prominent faculty researchers (n = 26) grouped by subspecialty. Faculty members provided a 3-minute overview of their research and interns were given 3 minutes to talk about their research interests and experiences. Interns completed questionnaires summarising their scholarly activities prior to and immediately following the SWIFT session and again 6 months and 18 months later. Interns and faculty staff also rated their satisfaction with SWIFT. Evaluation of results and impact Results confirmed that 75% (n = 18) of our interns had participated in research prior to residency, but only 30% had spoken with faculty staff about research, 9% had identified a research mentor and 9% had begun working on a research project. Six and 18 months after participating in SWIFT, 75% of interns had identified a research mentor and were engaged in research. Almost half of these interns indicated that they had met or learned about their mentors through SWIFT, and 65% of interns agreed or strongly agreed that it was easier to interact with faculty members because of their earlier introduction at SWIFT. Interns’ open-ended comments following SWIFT were consistently positive (e.g. ‘I didn’t know how to go about approaching a faculty member regarding research, but I feel much more comfortable now’) and 39% of interns stated that SWIFT had changed their career plans. Faculty evaluations were also very positive. This ‘speed dating’-based model promoted informed self-selection of research mentors and was linked to desirable research outcomes. By May of their second postgraduate year, 48% of interns had submitted a paper for publication and 22% had published their research. Interns gained career advice, interview practice, networking opportunities and confidence in their abilities to perform research. In conclusion, SWIFT proved to be an efficient tool for introducing internal medicine interns to research faculty members. Given our initial success, we plan to make SWIFT a regular component of our residency programme’s promotion of scholarly activities.