2. A venture or an initial attempt, especially outside one's usual area: an actor's foray into politics.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/foray

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Note added at 41 mins (2017-10-29 11:56:01 GMT)
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Her career began as a purely scientific foray into paleobotany but eventually broadened to encompass numerous forms of social activism...
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/marie-charlotte-carmichael-stop...
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But Lodge did not take Lord Rayleigh's advice. Instead, once again exhibiting his inability to pursue one theme of research to conclusion, he left for a vacation in Europe that included a scientific foray into a very different realm.

http://www.crownpublishing.com/sites/erik-larson-thunderstru...

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’ Kandel then describes his intrepid scientific foray into the world of recombinant DNA in the mouse, where he and his colleagues became interested
in the molecular mechanisms underlying the encoding of
spatial relationships, a form of memory known to depend
critically on the hippocampus.
http://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(06)00375-8.pdf