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Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Technology
Julie Thompson Klein, Association for Integrative Studies Newsletter, 27 (October 2005): 4-7. Reprinted with the permission of the Association for Integrative Studies.
An overview of the expanding profile of interdiscipinary research through the lenses of reports issued by National Academies Press. Featured reports include New Alliances and Partnerships in American Science and Engineering (1986), Scientific Interfaces and Technological Applications (1986) Sproull and Hall's Multidisciplinary Research and Education Programs in Universities (1987), Interdisciplinary Research: Promoting Collaboration Between the Life Sciences and Medicine and the Physical Sciences and Engineering (1990), Pellmar and Eisenberg's Bridging Disciplines in the Brain, Behavioral, and Clinical Sciences (2000), BIO 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists (2003), and extended description of Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research (2004).
Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Technology: National Reports Give Evidence of Changing Dynamics
By Julie Thompson Klein, Wayne State University
In 1991, authors of a mammoth study of Federally Funded Research in the United States declared that “Research in general is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary” ( 224 ). The recent appearance of a major report from the National Academies on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research marks a threshold point in science and technology. Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the profile of interdisciplinary research (IDR) heightened and it attained a new plurality evident in the report’s opening examples. Many key topics today are interdisciplinary, prominent among them nanotechnology, genomics, bioinformatics, neurosciences, conflict, and terrorism. Many significant accomplishments are products of interdisciplinary inquiry and collaboration, including discovery of the structure of DNA, the Manhattan Project, laser eye surgery, human genome sequencing, the “green” revolution, and human space flight. Generative technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging are also enhancing research capabilities in many fields through the development of new instrumentation and informational analysis ( 17 ).
Authors of the report highlight four powerful drivers of IDR today:
(1) the inherent complexity of nature and society,
(2) the desire to explore problems and questions that are not confined to a single discipline,
(3) the need to solve societal problems,
(4) the power of new technologies. ( 2 )
The current heightened momentum is also linked historically with international economic competition in the 1970s in science-based technologies. The National Science Foundation (NSF) responded with new funding programs aimed at strengthening U.S. science and technology. Over the past two and a half decades, programs such as the University-Industry Cooperative Research Centers, Engineering Research Centers, and Science and Technology Centers have made collaboration, competitiveness, problem solving, systems, complexity, and interdisciplinarity new keywords in academic research.
Throughout the period, the National Academies Press has continued to publish numerous reports that track the expansion of IDR and continuing impediments. The 1986 New Alliances and Partnerships in American Science and Engineering and Sproull and Hall’s 1987 Multidisciplinary Research and Education Programs in Universities were both affiliated with the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable, created in 1984 as a forum for multiple stakeholders to explore jointly the productivity of the U.S. research enterprise. The Roundtable was sponsored by three of the four advisory groups that constitute the National Academies in the U.S.: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. Beyond more familiar structures such as centers, institutes, and research parks, the new models and alliances include offices of technology transfer and industrial liaison programs, joint mergers and commercial ventures, research networks and consortia, contract research, and entrepreneurial firms that offer services or manufacture products. All of the activities that occur are not interdisciplinary, but research is typically problem-focused and often collaborative. Innovations in product design and the knowledge produced in these facilities also utilize new ideas and methods born at the interfaces of traditional disciplines. At the time of the two reports, the areas attracting the greater attention were advanced engineering materials and methods, computer sciences and complex systems software, molecular biology, and biomedical specialties.
The expanding profile of IDR has implications for the disciplines as well. In 1972 the National Research Council (NRC), the fourth advisory group in the National Academies, declared there was “no definable boundary” between physics and other disciplines (Physics in Perspective 67). In a subsequent report, the 1986 volume Scientific Interfaces and Technological Applications, NRC highlighted new disciplines arising from the interfaces of physics and other sciences plus applications in technology, medicine, and national defense. Almost all significant growth in recent decades, the Panel on Scientific Interfaces and Technological Applications explained, has occurred at “the interdisciplinary borderlands” between established fields. The five prominent areas in fundamental research are biological physics, materials science, the physics-chemistry interface, geophysics, and in mathematical physics and computational physics. The six outstanding areas of technical applications, which are pivotal to large-scale industrial technology, are microelectronics, optical technology, new instrumentation, the fields of energy and environment, national security, and medical applications. In each area, the Panel offered recommendations aimed at facilitating interdisciplinary research and improving educational preparation.
In 1990, the National Academies Press published another NRC-affiliated report on Interdisciplinary Research: Promoting Collaboration Between the Life Sciences and Medicine and the Physical Sciences and Engineering. A joint activity of the Institute of Medicine’s Division of Health Science Policy and the Board on Physics and Astronomy, the report sought to bridge gaps in communication between the cultures of physical sciences, engineering, biology, and medicine. New intellectual understandings of biological systems, problem complexity, the costs of instrumentation and facilities, and the desire to transfer knowledge rapidly from laboratory to hospital and marketplace are driving forces propelling collaboration.
This report highlights the role of scientific and technological developments in diagnostic instrumentation, medical devices, drug design, synthetic and genetically engineering biological materials, and new tools of quantitative and computer-assisted mathematical analysis in the practice of clinical medicine and surgery and on disease prevention and health. Despite the momentum, though, impediments continue to slow the pace of change. The report offered detailed suggestions for facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration and easing impediments in university and teaching hospital structures as well as academic-industrial interactions. It also commented on the role of federal funding agencies and private foundations.
Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research
Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research is the latest and most comprehensive report on IDR published by the National Academies Press. Issued in November 2004, it is framed by the widening impact of activities tracked in previous reports and new developments. The report emanated from a partnership of the National Academies and the W.M. Keck Foundation aimed at stimulating new modes of inquiry and breaking down conceptual and institutional impediments in science, engineering, and medical research. The invited members of a Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research represented a cross-section of governmental, academic, and industrial experience in leading and performing interdisciplinary research. They were charged with studying the current nature and extent of IDR; identifying and analyzing structural models and the policies and procedures of Congress, funding organizations, and academic and non-academic institutions; identifying measures to evaluate impact on research, students, and researchers; addressing enabling and impeding factors; and presenting their findings and recommendations. The report draws from their literature review, interviews with leading scholars, focus groups held at a National Academies Keck Futures Initiative Conference, input from invited speakers and participants at a January 2004 conference at NAS headquarters in Washington, D.C., and surveys of convocation participants, individuals who responded to an instrument posted on the Committee’s website, and a third instrument distributed to provosts or vice-chancellors in selected institutions.
The report is divided into ten sections. After the opening Executive Summary, Chapter 1 provides an “interdisciplinary vision” and describes where the research community has been in the past and is now going. Chapter 2 presents a definition of IDR, discusses the four driving forces, and explores the nature of successful interdisciplinary work. Chapter 3 features case studies and strategies in industry and government laboratories. Chapter 4 describes the current working environment and challenges for students and academic researchers. Chapter 5 discusses institutional barriers to and policies supporting interdisciplinary research, education and training. Chapters 6 and 7 address respectively the roles of federal and private funding organizations, and of professional societies. Chapter 8 ponders the challenges of evaluating interdisciplinary outcomes in research and teaching. Chapter 9 looks at the overall structures in which IDR takes place and proposes incremental as well as transformative policies. Chapter 10 synthesizes the Committee’s findings and recommendations. The eight appendixes contain support documents, including a short essay on how some “interdisciplines” have evolved into disciplines and results of the survey of institutions and individuals, interviews, and focus groups.
Funding agencies play a vital role in facilitating IDR. The Committee urges both private and public funding organizations to develop more favorable policies and structures, including interagency cooperative activities and revised proposal and review criteria. Funding agencies are already keenly aware of the changing landscape of knowledge. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap for medical research was a major example at the convocation and in the report. The NIH Roadmap recognizes that collaborative teams and new combinations of skills and disciplines are increasingly needed to deal with research problems effectively. Propelled by recent discoveries in molecular and cell biology, the complexity of biology requires a better “toolbox” to understand the combination of molecular events that lead to diseases such as cancer. Improved technologies, databases, and computational infrastructure are key to viewing and interacting with basic life processes. Hence, molecular imaging, bioinformatics and computational biology, and nano-medicine loom large in the contemporary interdisciplinary expanse of biological and medicine sciences (http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/interdisciplinary/grants.asp).
The National Science Foundation (NSF) was also represented at the convocation and in the report. In a separate April 2004 report, National Science Foundation: Governance and Management of the Future , the agency highlighted efforts to reshape its processes, structures, and incentives in order to stimulate interdisciplinary and innovative research. The system of “Crosscutting” programs includes interdisciplinary initiatives and programs supported by multiple Directorates at NSF and jointly with other Federal agencies. Current models include the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT), Innovation and Organizational Change (IOC), Information Technology Research (ITR), Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI), Partnership in Nanotechnology (NANO), Partnership for Innovation (PFI), and Science and Technology Centers: Integrative Partnerships STC). The Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) Funding Initiative was also created to find ways to model and use computer and cross-disciplinary scientific data.
Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research also urges that comparative evaluations of research institutions, such as the National Academies assessment of doctoral programs and activities that rank university departments, become more inclusive of interdisciplinary. Here too, key groups are already alert to the need for change. When a separate committee was charged with examining the methodology used in the 1995 National Research Council’s study of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States, it faulted the study for outdated or inappropriate taxonomy of fields. In proposing a new taxonomy, the committee recommended an overall increase in the number of recognized fields from 41 to 57. Among their recommendations, they proposed that biological sciences be renamed life sciences, and that agricultural sciences be included. In addition, they called for greater inclusion of subfields to acknowledge the density of activities in complex fields as well as greater recognition of emerging fields. Primary examples include knowledge production by and about underrepresented groups, evident in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. They also include expanding global area studies as well as nanoscience, bioinformatics, and computational biology. No less significant, the Committee found that the problem of naming arises in all fields. Despite general agreement that interdisciplinary research is widespread, doctoral programs often retain traditional names (Ostriker and Kuh).
Despite the current heightened momentum for IDR, researchers still encounter a host of obstacles and disincentives that are familiar from earlier reports. Some take the form of personal communication or “culture” barriers. Others are related to the tradition in academic institutions of organizing research and teaching by discipline-based departments, perpetuating disincentives throughout the system of budget, administrative report lines, recruitment and hiring, promotion, and tenure. Even with changes at NIH, NSF, and other public and private agencies, that tradition is mirrored in the peer-review process and resource allocations. The Committee urges professional societies to facilitate IDR by producing state-of-the-art reports on recent research developments, curriculum, assessment, and accreditation methods in their respective disciplines and fields, as well as publishing interdisciplinary journals and special editions of disciplinary journals, hosting special forums at regular meetings, launching targeted initiatives, and generally promoting mutual understanding of disciplinary methods, languages, and cultures. Industrial and national laboratories can furnish valuable insights into establishing matrix structures for problem-oriented research, establishing leadership models, and utilizing proven strategies for managing collaborative teamwork.
Education and training play a particularly crucial role in the long-term prospects for IDR. While providing examples of innovative practices, the Committee exhorts the academy to create more opportunities for undergraduates as well as graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Two other documents published by the National Academies Press also depict innovative structures and strategies. The 2003 NRC-affiliated report BIO 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists offers a blueprint for bringing undergraduate education in biology “up to the speed” of contemporary research. The authors call for a strong interdisciplinary curriculum that integrates physical sciences information technology, and mathematics with life sciences, while decreasing administrative and financial barriers to cross-departmental collaboration. Case study boxes highlight model courses and approaches across North America, and the body of the report includes detailed recommendations for key concepts and skills, curriculum models, textbooks and teaching materials, and innovative pedagogy. In addition, Pellmar and Eisenberg’s 2000 committee report on Bridging Disciplines in the Brain, Behavioral, and Clinical Sciences includes models of interdisciplinary teaching and training at all levels, from undergraduate and pre- and post-doctoral training to career education.
Throughout Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, a host of text boxes highlight innovative practices, organizational structures, and institutional policies. “Toolkits” illustrate how proposals, individuals, funding organizations, centers, and research outcomes can be evaluated. Case studies present a variety of programs and practices in industry, national labs, and academic settings in North America and abroad. Sample models and lessons also appear in individual chapters. Like all reports, Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research has limits. There are holes in the literature review, undermining the Committee’s claim of being hampered by a lack of recent published information on models, policies, and answers to questions about which areas should be strengthened and what technologies and instruments are most likely to generate new fields and subfields. The strategy of “best practices” also tends to privilege elite models, and the research base is not a longitudinal empirical study. Nonetheless, this report is a valuable tool for campuses embarking on or already engaged in efforts to facilitate interdisciplinary research. It is an authoritative snapshot of what is happening nationwide and a “must read” discussion piece.
In his comparative international study of research and advanced education in modern universities, Burton Clark stated the challenge that all research universities face. Modern systems of higher education are confronted by a gap between older, simple expectations and complex realities that outrun those expectations. Definitions that depict one part or function of the university as its “essence” or “essential mission” only underscore the gap between simplified views and new operational realities that are transforming the way we think about knowledge and education (154-55). Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research portrays the new reality of interdisciplinary research and provides resources for responding.
Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research (2004) is 332 pages long and may be ordered online from the National Academies Press, with a discount for online orders (http://books.nap.edu/catalog/11153.html). The hard-copy paperback is $42.00, and the web version is $37.80 (ISBN 0309094356). The price of the paperback and PDF is $45.50 (0-309-54729-6). The price of the PDF book is $28.50 (0-309-54727-X) and individual PDF chapters $2.70 each. (0-309-54728-8). Chapters may also be skim read online without charge.
References
Clark . B.R. (1995). Places of Inquiry: Research and Advanced Education In Modern Universities. Berkeley: University of California Press.
National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, & Institute of Medicine. (2004). Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
National Research Council. (1986). Scientific Interfaces and Technological Applications. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
National Research Council. (1990). Interdisciplinary Research: Promoting Collaboration Between the Life Sciences and Medicine and the Physical Sciences and Engineering. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
National Research Council (2003). BIO 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists. 2003. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
National Science Foundation: Governance and Management for the Future (2004). Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Public Administration.
NIH Roadmap. (2003). Retrieved from http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/interdisciplinary/grants.asp.
Ostriker, J. P. & C. V. Kuh (Eds.) (2003). Assessing Research-Doctorate Programs: A Methodology Study. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
Pellmar, R. and L. Eisenberg (Eds.) (2000). Bridging Disciplines in the Brain, Behavioral, and Clinical Sciences. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
U.S. Congress. (1991). Federally Funded Research: Decisions for a Decade (OTA-SET-490). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
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