Discover Schmidt Science Fellows

Interdisciplinarity

Solving the world’s complex problems will be so much harder if higher education is confined to disciplinary silos. Universities must encourage work across departments to develop creative and innovative answers to global challenges.

Pressing global challenges spark the need for multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and convergence research. These terms are often used interchangeably, but there are subtle differences between them.Multidisciplinary research involves faculty from different disciplines working independently on a common research problem or a thematic area to supplement each other’s data. Interdisciplinary research involves working collaboratively across disciplinary boundaries to develop integrated knowledge that meets a specific challenge. Such collaboration has led to the emergence of novel areas such as photonics, nanoscience and technology, material sciences and neurosciences. &nbsp;The emerging convergence research area facilitates the transdisciplinary merging of life sciences, physical sciences, engineering and beyond to stimulate innovation from basic science discovery to translational research. Such merging requires a deep integration of collaborating disciplines and its results should have a positive societal impact. This resource outlines the advantages and challenges of working beyond the comfort zones of discipline-specific research.AdvantagesActive knowledge exchange (creation): this kind of collaboration facilitates active collaboration and concept sharing between parties across different disciplines. Such interactions lead to specific knowledge exchange, skills development, fresh insight and solution-driven pathways that are only achievable when working across disciplines. For example, many of the healthcare devices that we routinely employ are the outcome of efficient collaboration and knowledge exchange between clinicians, engineers and scientists. &nbsp;Well-rounded solutions to complex global challenges: addressing real-world global challenges such as climate change, energy crises, agriculture demand and water scarcity requires expertise across different domains including physics, chemistry, economics, politics and others. Therefore, breaking the silos of disciplines via interdisciplinary and convergence research is vital if we want to facilitate innovative and well-rounded solutions. &nbsp;The creation of new scientific fields: interdisciplinary or convergence research can result in in-depth interaction between scholars across disciplines. This can lead to the development of completely new fields of enquiry that explore uncharted territory.Creativity and skills development: the blending of varied expertise through such research projects often leads to productive and high-impact experimentation, analysis and out-of-the-box thinking, as we saw with the production of Covid vaccines. In addition, cross-disciplinary research subjects such as photonics, nanoscience and technology and structural biology provide researchers with opportunities to work on research ventures beyond their existing skill sets and knowledge. This opens the mind and enhances communication skills. Arguably the most exciting outcomes of such collaboration, however, include improved problem-solving skills, research outcomes, understanding of complex phenomena and high-calibre innovations.Resources for higher education professionals on interdisciplinarityBreaking down disciplinary silos in pursuit of innovationPractical strategies for overcoming challenges in interdisciplinary project-based learningChallengesDisciplinary boundaries and jargon: researchers from different disciplines use their specialised language and theories which can create obstacles to communication. The key to overcoming such boundaries is to be inclusive with language by using simple, everyday terminology that collaborators from different fields can understand.Communication issues: finding common ground among people with different ways of thinking and approaches to problem-solving is often challenging. This kind of collaboration can lead to communication difficulties and disagreement that can hinder research progress. Knowing your audience, organising the information effectively and focusing on the output can facilitate seamless communication. Be culturally sensitive and use open channels of communication with efficient feedback loops.Knowledge imbalance: team members must have a general understanding of each other’s disciplines to collaborate effectively. To conduct rigorous research, a balance of general knowledge and disciplinary expertise is important, but finding team members with this can be a formidable task.Resource management: interdisciplinary and convergence research projects often require infrastructure and resources from various institutions and funding agencies which is often difficult to obtain and manage. Although the emergence of interdisciplinary research centres and departments in universities and institutes promises a positive change, people and resource management pose challenges. The time researchers have to invest in familiarising themselves with new peers from diverse backgrounds can delay research progress.It is heartening to see that the governments of many countries putting efforts into skills development for multi-, interdisciplinary and convergence research in higher education. Despite their challenges, the perks that they offer far outweigh them.Sajan Daniel George is a professor and the head of the department for atomic and molecular physics at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India.If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week,&nbsp;sign up for the Campus&nbsp;newsletter.

Benefits and challenges of cross-disciplinary collaboration

Global challenges demand collaboration across disciplines. This resource explores the associated advantages and challenges

The benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and convergence research

Building the foundations for a sustained human presence on the Moon requires the support of scientists, engineers, policymakers and researchers from across the globe. Intentionally forming research communities, in which scientists and engineers of diverse abilities and disciplinary backgrounds have a forum to collaborate across shared goals, is crucial.A future lunar outpost requires the translation of both existing technologies and the development of new technologies for the lunar and cislunar space. Such technologies can be used to automate construction, improve communication and navigation across the lunar surface, and to sustainably harness power in the harsh lunar environment. Developing a lunar outpost demands a huge effort from our tenacious terrestrial science and research communities.&nbsp;“We are in this place right now with space exploration where we are trying to bring in way more people and way more non-traditional partners than we have ever had,” says Wesley Fuhrman, a senior scientist in the Space Exploration Sector at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.&nbsp;Fuhrman is a leader for Nasa’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Lunar Operating Guidelines for Infrastructure Consortium. These research communities comprise academic, industry and government stakeholders engaging in an open dialogue.&nbsp;“We are developing the technologies and recommending interoperating standards for a sustained presence and commercial economy on the Moon, so not just to drop the lander down for a couple of days and come back up,” Fuhrman says. “That is a huge process in going from footprint to foothold. The only way you can get to that point is to leverage the phenomenal technology base that has developed since then.”Fuhrman’s experience as a Schmidt Science Fellow gave him some ideas of how research communities bolster interdisciplinary research. “Strong and defined values and ethics build communities, and openly discussing them helps establish a culture that forms the bedrock,” Furman says. “I prefer to be explicit when we talk. What are we trying to accomplish when we are having our sessions? How do we want to support each other? We learned a lot of that through the Schmidt Science programme. We were very much encouraged from the get-go, with dedicated time and attention paid to creating a culture.”“Allowing the community to both organically and intentionally be built around its shared ethics and develop the people within it, is what yields results,” Fuhrman says. “Keep the focus on the community and shared vision, not just the output. If you do that, you’ll end up getting much better output anyway.”Times Higher Education&nbsp;has&nbsp;partnered with Schmidt Science Fellows to develop a&nbsp;new ranking measuring universities’ contribution to&nbsp;interdisciplinary science.&nbsp;Find out how to participate.Find out more&nbsp;about Schmidt Science Fellows.

Large-scale projects, such as creating a sustained presence on the Moon, are complex, interdisciplinary endeavours that test researchers to the limit. But with support from the research community – united by common purpose and values – lunar development efforts can take a giant leap towards establishing an outpost on the Moon

Shooting for the Moon with interdisciplinary approaches to lunar development

Image credit: Josh Fee

Interdisciplinary science thrives when researchers are given the time, space and freedom to pursue their intellectual curiosity in environments where no question is considered off-limits. Those conditions are not always easy to find on campus, where incentive structures encourage specialisation, often leaving the big ideas on ice. 

Rachel Parker, senior director of research and head of next-generation initiatives at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), says this has to change. She believes that organisations like CIFAR can play a vital role in supporting scientists by putting them in a room together and developing their most ambitious ideas – those that might have been too radical,&nbsp;or simply too interdisciplinary, to be entertained elsewhere.

“We want people to come with their earliest possible idea, something that is truly formative and is going to benefit from the collective knowledge around the table,” Parker says. “All CIFAR programmes are orientated around the next big idea, the next challenge, ones that are so complex that they necessitate a really broad constellation of people, an interdisciplinary perspective, in order to make progress on fundamental research.”

CIFAR facilitates interdisciplinary science through a number of initiatives. Its research programmes might involve a collaboration between up to 25 fellows, and operate on renewable five-year terms with no sunset clause in recognition that this is work that requires long-term commitment. “It takes a long time for these highly interdisciplinary groups to build a shared language, a shared sense of direction and trust across the group,” says Parker. CIFAR offers a space for ideas that might not fit the traditional disciplinary mould in other academic contexts. Its meetings are hosted under the Chatham House Rule, encouraging open discussion.

CIFAR supports early-career researchers through its Azrieli Global Scholars Programme, which grants junior faculty C$100,000 (£58,000) over two years, in addition to the opportunity to work alongside established researchers. The programme also provides seed funding via Catalyst Grants, which further enable early-career researchers with interdisciplinary projects to take bigger risks. “It has to be an idea that has no obvious home,” Parker says. “We have a couple of examples where those have spun out into half-a-million-dollar grants further down the line. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it enables these researchers to further their impact and their careers. It’s rewarding to know that CIFAR provided the space for that conversation to even happen in the first place.”

In addition to its Azrieli Global Scholars Programme, CIFAR’s Child and Brain Development programme piloted a training scheme offering mentorship to late-career graduate students and postdoctoral students, exposing them to the reality of life as an interdisciplinary scientist, in which there is always something new to learn.

“They get exposure to how their mentors are asking questions when they don’t understand something,” Parker says. “That is also crucial: being willing to show your vulnerabilities, that you have something to learn from another discipline.”

CIFAR partnered with Schmidt Science Fellows&nbsp;in 2023 to bring together a group of CIFAR-Azrieli Global Scholars and Schmidt Science Fellows to explore opportunities&nbsp;for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Times Higher Education&nbsp;has&nbsp;partnered with Schmidt Science Fellows to develop a&nbsp;new ranking measuring universities’ contribution to&nbsp;interdisciplinary science.&nbsp;Find out how to participate.

Find out more&nbsp;about Schmidt Science Fellows.

Getting multidisciplinary projects off the ground can be a heavy lift for even the most motivated scientists, but forward-thinking organisations like CIFAR are willing to lend a hand, convening international research groups and offering the much-needed support to develop their ideas

Where the boldest research ideas find a home

Image credit: Claudine Gossett

Discussions of impactful research often focus on the bigger picture: impact at a societal level, how an innovation might revolutionise an industry or improve the lives of a particular community. And yet for researchers like Sandya Subramanian, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, impact is something they can put a name and a face to.

Subramanian’s research focuses on developing a physiological monitoring system that gathers data from the autonomic nervous system in chronic migraine patients. The work is inherently interdisciplinary, requiring computational and hardware expertise, and it finds her deployed in clinical settings, where patients will often consider her a part of their clinical team. 

“People will share aspects of their life with you and be very open and vulnerable with you in ways that sometimes is very intimidating to handle,” she says. “But one of the benefits of being interdisciplinary all this time is that I have been trained, I have a familiarity with clinical environments that really helps that.”

Being embedded as a “pseudo member” of the clinical team, collecting this data herself and interacting with patients, Subramanian enjoys a unique perspective on her research and considers her patients co-collaborators whose feedback on the monitoring technology is invaluable.

“It gives you this very human perspective,” she says. “You get this very real kind of sampling like when people come back and tell you, ‘Well, this was a little hard to wear. This was a little uncomfortable’. It gives you a very real sampling of the real-world problems of implementing this. As a scientist, it also gives you a whole new perspective on the data.”

The American Migraine Foundation estimates that up to 148 million people worldwide have chronic migraines, with three to five per cent of the US population affected. Subramanian hopes the data pooled from the autonomic nervous system – which she describes as a bridge between brain and body – can be used to inform better treatment pathways.

“The autonomic nervous system is probably the less-loved child because everyone focuses on what happens in the brain directly and the spinal cord next, and then everyone is interested in things like movement and decision-making and emotion,” she says. “They are all so much more sexier sounding than basic reflexes, right? The autonomic nervous system gets a lot less attention and therefore has been far less studied.”

It might be less-studied but it’s no less important. The data collected by this technology could offer insights into any number of conditions. More broadly, the application of wearable physiological sensors could change the existing healthcare paradigm, with data insights gleaned from wearable tech facilitating more personalised medicine. If successful, Subramanian’s patients will have played their part.

“Most patients are happy to participate because they see it as their way of giving back to the healthcare system,” she says. “They are asking lots of questions and are really happy to take on some inconvenience and participate and for that I have always been very grateful.”

Times Higher Education&nbsp;has&nbsp;partnered with Schmidt Science Fellows to develop a&nbsp;new ranking measuring universities’ contribution to&nbsp;interdisciplinary science.&nbsp;Find out how to participate.

Find out more&nbsp;about Schmidt Science Fellows.

At the frontiers of computational research and medical hardware, interdisciplinary approaches offer hope to chronic migraine patients through ground-breaking physiological sensors and analytical tools that analyse the autonomic nervous system for clues about the debilitating condition

Inside the data-driven search for migraine relief

Society’s digital transformation is still in its infancy and yet we already have an ocean of data to draw upon. But if all this information is to provide us with the raw material for innovation, we need scientists who can interpret it. Sahil Loomba is one such scientist. A Schmidt Science Fellow&nbsp;in the&nbsp;Institute for Data, Systems and Society&nbsp;at&nbsp;Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Loomba specialises in applying mathematics and machine learning to better understand complex networks and systems, from the biological and cognitive to the social.

“Networks are my favourite abstraction, and I try to view physical, biological, social, technological, and ecological systems from that perspective. Without that holistic view, we risk being reductionist and unable to plug significant gaps in our knowledge of these complex systems,” Loomba says.

“We are swimming in a lot of data, but to really make sense of that we need to understand the underlying network structure, the mechanisms that are generating that data, to determine what is happening causally,” he says. “For me, it is not just a helpful lens to view the world from, and intellectually stimulating, but it is also a matter of actively solving practical problems.”

Loomba was a computer science and engineering undergraduate when he realised his intellectual curiosity would take him across disciplinary boundaries. He could see how mathematical and computational approaches might help solve problems in biological systems. Loomba’s predoctoral work at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering gave him first-hand experience of an interdisciplinary research environment.

“It exemplifies the idea of interdisciplinary science and engineering because, under one roof, it had engineers, biologists, computer scientists, mathematicians and doctors working together to respond to extremely complicated challenges in biology and medicine,” he says. “The kinds of outputs that we had were amazing; taking a networked view of genetic perturbations allowed us to successfully repurpose drugs for rare genetic conditions that have now entered clinical trials. It really drove it home for me that interdisciplinary science is what motivates me. It helps us solve real problems in an integrative manner that traditional disciplinary silos often don’t.”

For his doctoral work at Imperial College London, Loomba pivoted to studying misinformation, vaccination behaviours and social segregation in friendship networks, responding to several societal challenges faced during the Covid-19 pandemic. He became a Schmidt Science Fellow in 2023, and the fellowship has allowed him to negotiate many of the obstacles that interdisciplinary scientists face, not least the pressure to publish. It has allowed him to engage in more academic partnerships and to take on more ambitious projects, with the fellowship removing some of the risks that come with cross-disciplinary work.

“I think one of the most wonderful things about the fellowship is that it is a fellowship; we are in a community of people who care for the same things at the end of the day, which is interdisciplinary science,” Loomba says. “We felt seen and heard in terms of the way we like to approach scientific research. That is a big component. It puts me at a kind of psychological ease as a somewhat iconoclastic researcher who is not going to stick to the norm.”

This scientific iconoclasm underpins Loomba’s sweeping research philosophy, which places computation at the heart of understanding the intricate networks that organise our world, from those on a biomolecular level to the systems governing society. “It would be good to see expanded support for researchers pursuing interdisciplinary sciences at all career stages, recognising the important role this approach can play in addressing the challenges we face,” Loomba concludes.

Times Higher Education&nbsp;has&nbsp;partnered with Schmidt Science Fellows to develop a&nbsp;new ranking measuring universities’ contribution to&nbsp;interdisciplinary science.&nbsp;Find out how to participate.

Find out more about Schmidt Science Fellows.

Our lives are governed by complex connected systems, and Schmidt Science Fellow Sahil Loomba has made it his life’s work to understand them. He is taking an interdisciplinary path, combining computation, statistics and machine-learning approaches to improve the world we live in

Understanding complex systems with computational power and interdisciplinary science

Intellectual curiosity is what animates scientists to do what they do – to dig deeper and ask the big questions. It does not heed disciplinary boundaries, and so, when those big questions take a scientist to the edge of their expertise, they must decide whether to follow their curiosity over it. Moving into new fields to translate biological insights into new robot capabilities is exactly how Ryan Truby, a biomedical engineer by undergraduate training, ended up at Northwestern University as an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Mechanical Engineering. 

A synopsis of Truby’s recent grants reads with the air of science fiction, spanning artificial muscle tissues for locomotion in soft machines to robotic architected materials with distributed sensorimotor capabilities. Truby’s research is centred on bridging the gap between living organisms and their capabilities and the world of robotics. It resides at the interface of materials engineering and robotics.

“We have a wealth of understanding about how the human body – or any living organism – works, how it is built and what materials comprise it,” he says. “We can look at robotics and quickly see that some of these insights might help us advance machine intelligence in new and critical ways. This is the problem space my lifelong curiosities have brought me to, taking those insights from biology and thinking about how I can translate them to advance the capabilities of robots. My hope is that the journey ahead will enable us to materialise true autonomy, true intelligence, in ways that computational approaches alone simply can’t.”

Truby made his pivot to materials science as a PhD student at Harvard University, where he found the intellectual breathing space to explore the construction of bioinspired robots and devices from soft matter. He notes it was a time when he first felt the tension between disciplinary focus and the interdisciplinary nature of his scientific interests.

Truby’s PhD advisor, Jennifer Lewis, helped him through. “Jennifer has become such a role model. Looking back, all my lab mates from those years are still among the most talented people I know. She had a way of bringing us together, with all our different backgrounds, to build a research team that was able to work on a variety of problems at the intersections of many fields,” Truby says. Being offered a Schmidt Science Fellowship, however, was “essential”, offering him similarly inspiring mentorship but on a systemic scale – and with funding. “The Schmidt Science Fellowship completely changed my reality,” he says. “It gave me a sense of agency to run straight into working in robotics as a materials engineer.”

Truby says he would love to see a research ecosystem that funds PhD students and postdoctoral researchers directly – a partial inversion of the current funding landscape that allows researchers at the earliest career stage to more directly take part in the formulation of interdisciplinary research projects aimed at solving major challenges. “The Schmidt Science Fellowship empowered me with the freedom to take a line of interdisciplinary enquiry in my research. I can only imagine the impact others could have and how quickly we could advance interdisciplinary science if they were given that same support and independence,” he says.

Inevitably, it will be Truby’s students who are designing solutions for tomorrow’s world. The current PhD students and postdoctoral scholars in his lab are already investigating how soft robotic materials can be deployed in areas such as sustainability and healthcare settings. It is all interdisciplinary, intellectual curiosity set loose.

Times Higher Education&nbsp;has&nbsp;partnered with Schmidt Science Fellows to develop a&nbsp;new ranking measuring universities’ contribution to&nbsp;interdisciplinary science.&nbsp;Find out how to participate.

Find out more about Schmidt Science Fellows.

The field of soft robotics draws on insights from biology and the abilities of living organisms to advance robot design. It offers a case study of why supporting interdisciplinary research among early career scientists drives innovation and yields radical scientific discoveries

Empowering early-career researchers to take intellectual curiosity to grand challenges

It is not difficult to find advocates for interdisciplinary research among the scientific research community. Most in academia recognise the potential of cross-disciplinary approaches to develop innovative solutions to complex real-world problems, such as climate change and healthcare. And yet barriers to interdisciplinary research remain. 

Stu Feldman, co-CEO and chief scientist at Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt to encourage interdisciplinary science, says barriers persist because of outdated incentive structures for individuals and institutions alike. “Almost nobody will say interdisciplinarity is a bad idea. Just, ‘Not here, or not in my department, or not yet in my career’,” Feldman says. “And we want to say, ‘Yes, it is time.’”

Feldman acknowledges that disciplines have positive aspects. But the world has changed. They traditionally offer structure, quality control and recognition, but disciplinary boundaries can be a straitjacket for researchers who seek funding and support for projects that find them collaborating with like-minded scientists on the frontier of their intellectual curiosity.

“Innovation happens because of new tools and new insights, or the freedom to roam on the intellectual sphere,” Feldman says. “Science is particularly prone to this because we have a more rigid funding and publication structure than some other scholarly fields. Climate is the poster boy example today of something that crosses lines, but the introduction of artificial intelligence into scientific use is about to disrupt the boundaries all over the place because that brings in all kinds of knowledge, all kinds of things that are not native to the classic disciplines. The opportunities are enormous. The needs are enormous.”

But if researchers are not encouraged to cross disciplines, they won’t. In particular, early career researchers face pressures to make an impact in their field to secure funding, to publish regularly, and the career advice they are often given is to pursue interdisciplinary research at a later date. Often that day will not arrive. “It is very hard to break out,” Feldman says. “We are very interested in providing advice, recommendations and top-down help.”

These top-down mechanisms include a partnership between Schmidt Science Fellows and Times Higher Education to develop a new ranking for interdisciplinary research. Feldman hopes that, by celebrating excellence, universities will be motivated to support faculty in crossing disciplines. He is hopeful that change is in the air. 

Newer institutions are embracing interdisciplinarity early in their development, building departments around broader scientific themes, such as life sciences and physical sciences, as opposed to those aligned to narrow disciplines. “They don’t have the weight of 50 years of tenured faculty lined up across each major field,” Feldman says. “We are seeing evidence that some new entrants into major science are very much encouraging line crossing.”

The real world’s problems can be too entangled for one discipline to tackle alone. Research projects often naturally become interdisciplinary when they are steered by impact. “Once you ask, ‘What’s the impact of what you’ve discovered?’ suddenly you are looking at engineering and biology and computer science,” Feldman says. “If you don’t have people who have deep scholarly knowledge – not just random reading – you will not get it right.”

Times Higher Education&nbsp;has partnered with Schmidt Science Fellows to develop a new ranking measuring universities’ contribution to interdisciplinary science.&nbsp;Find out how to participate.

Find out more about Schmidt Science Fellows.

Interdisciplinary approaches allow researchers of different scholarly backgrounds to pool their expertise and enhance the impact of their discoveries. But for these projects to flourish, we need to rethink the research ecosystem to support scientists as they cross disciplinary lines

Breaking down disciplinary silos in pursuit of innovation

Project-based learning encourages students to combine knowledge from different subjects to solve complex, real-world problems. However, it brings challenges such as ensuring fair and transparent project assignments and maintaining smooth communication between students and teachers. This article explores strategies to overcome these and to promote students’ independence.

1. Ensuring equitable and transparent project allocation

One of the primary challenges of project-based learning is ensuring that projects are distributed fairly among students while taking their diverse backgrounds, interests and skill sets into consideration. A possible solution could be to use technology to enhance the transparency and efficiency of project allocation. 

We have outsourced a specialised open-source Moodle plugin called “Fair Allocation”&nbsp;to optimise project allocation at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. It promotes transparency by allowing students to explore project details and prerequisites online in their own time. It also facilitates a more self-directed approach to students’ learning journeys by allowing them to browse through projects based on their strengths and interests.

Implementing the Moodle-based automatic allocation system makes project distribution fairer. It allows students to make up to 10 ranked choices based on their preferences. Its algorithm then matches&nbsp;students with projects based on their chosen priorities and each project’s quota (the number of students each project can take), promoting equitability and fostering a diverse and interdisciplinary learning environment.

2. Enhancing student autonomy and interdisciplinary learning

Engaging students in autonomous, interdisciplinary learning is not easy, especially if they lack a clear understanding of the educational value of such an approach.

A potential solution could be to implement student-centred pedagogical methods and foster a culture of autonomy via the following:

Personalised learning paths:&nbsp;designing projects that are tailored to students’ interests and career aspirations can significantly enhance their engagement. By offering a wide range of projects that span multiple disciplines, educators empower students to chart their unique learning journeys.

Real-time feedback:&nbsp;providing timely and constructive feedback is paramount when cultivating student autonomy. Our&nbsp;study&nbsp;shows that using digital platforms to provide real-time feedback and promote discussion helps students stay on track, grasp project requirements more effectively and make appropriate adjustments on time.

Encouraging risk-taking:&nbsp;encouraging students to venture beyond their comfort zones and explore unfamiliar disciplines boosts creativity and innovation. Educators can design projects that bridge the gaps between different disciplines, challenging students to integrate diverse perspectives and develop novel solutions. This approach not only enhances interdisciplinary learning but promotes out-of-the-box thinking.


	Resource collection: Unpacking academic interdisciplinarity
	Interdisciplinarity in teaching: what it is and how to make it work
	Fostering interdisciplinary learning in large-scale doctoral programmes


3. Promoting effective communication between students and educators

It is important to ensure that communication between students and educators is unhindered by miscommunication, unclear expectations or a lack of feedback mechanisms. To do so, you can adopt a multifaceted communication strategy that leverages technology. Strategies include: 

Using relevant digital platforms:&nbsp;our&nbsp;study&nbsp;shows that setting up a digital platform specifically for project-related discussions, announcements and feedback can significantly improve communication. Platforms such as Moodle or Microsoft Teams offer many features, including discussion forums, file-sharing capabilities and real-time collaboration tools. These facilitate streamlined and effective communication among students and educators.

Scheduling regular check-ins:&nbsp;scheduling check-ins between students and educators maintains communication channels. These check-ins can take various forms, such as virtual meetings, progress reports or casual conversations to resolve queries and concerns promptly and promote a culture of openness and accountability.

Setting clear expectations and guidelines:&nbsp;establishing unambiguous guidelines and expectations at the project’s inception helps prevent misunderstandings and ensures all involved are aligned. Disseminating detailed project briefs, timelines and assessment rubrics helps with managing expectations and cultivates transparency and clarity that aids collaboration and the learning process.

As we navigate higher education’s evolving landscape, we must adapt our approaches to learning, ensuring that students are prepared to tackle the complex challenges of an interconnected world. By harnessing technology and implementing student-centred pedagogies, educators can effectively address the challenges inherent in interdisciplinary project-based learning. These strategies can help create a robust framework that empowers students to develop interdisciplinary skill sets.&nbsp;

Na Li is associate professor, director of the Digital Education Programme, and co-director of the Research Centre for AI and Education and the Academy of Future Education; Eng Gee Lim is dean of the School of Advanced Technology; and Mark Leach is deputy dean of the School of Advanced Technology,&nbsp;all at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. 

If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week,&nbsp;sign up for the Campus&nbsp;newsletter.

How to overcome challenges in project-based learning

Overcome project-based learning challenges with strategies aimed at empowering students to develop interdisciplinary skill sets

Practical strategies for overcoming challenges in interdisciplinary project-based learning

Science is facing a new reality in which the world’s most difficult problems can only be solved by interdisciplinary research, and this requires a change in how research is taught and conducted. Shriya Srinivasan, assistant professor of bioengineering at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, can testify to the scientific advantages of crossdisciplinary collaboration – but also the challenges facing early career scientists. She argues that if we want more interdisciplinary science, we need systemic change.

“In a lot of ways, the education system needs to change,” Srinivasan says. “At a very early stage, there need to be workshops, courses – curricula that promote crossdisciplinary training. The next layer is governmental policy, regulatory and incentive structures, and the development of facilities that enable interdisciplinary individuals to have career paths that are non-linear and non-standard.”

Srinivasan’s research interests lie on the frontiers of medicine and engineering, approaching surgical reconstruction – a sub-field of plastic and reconstructive surgery – from an engineering perspective. She is a product of the health sciences and technology programme co-administered by Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While undertaking her PhD, Srinivasan pioneered approaches to restoring touch and feel in prosthetic limbs, and how to translate these groundbreaking procedures into clinical settings. 

“I employ a blend of surgical reconstruction and ingestible or implantable bioelectronics to address dysfunctions in motor and sensory control,” she says. “My work is inherently interdisciplinary because I blend fields of engineering and medicine that hadn’t historically intersected. Nowadays, the biomedical engineering field brings these disciplines together to a great degree; however, this is a relatively nascent approach in many parts of the world .”

Third-party institutions can assist in career development. A Schmidt Science Fellowship gave Srinivasan the confidence and support to expand her work into different areas. The lessons she learned designing and commercializing medical devices for global health markets, through the Project Prana Foundation, Srinivasan’s non-profit, have informed education programmes that the foundation now offers to students. These enable young minds to receive exposure to adjacent fields in their undergraduate and graduate years and inspire them to imagine interdisciplinary solutions. This is a first step towards strengthening healthcare innovation in global health contexts.&nbsp; Today’s interdisciplinary scientist needs a wide skillset.

“Primary among them is communication and the ability to manage and engage with the diversity of communication styles and lexicons present between team members that are from different disciplines,” Srinivasan says. “Each field has its own operating language and jargon. That can lead to gaps in understanding or misunderstandings, and so communication is a key skill.”

Managing knowledge gaps is another skill. It is critical for interdisciplinary scientists to learn as much as they can about adjacent disciplines. Srinivasan holds workshops, brainstorming sessions where different research perspectives can be shared, and weekly meetings in her lab with clinicians, engineers and, on occasion, patients and stakeholders from the policymaking sphere.

“In many situations, there are also hierarchical structures in one field that don’t exist in another,” Srinivasan says. “There are ways in which a field works that make it very difficult to bridge, and so learning to navigate all of these demands a multifaceted skillset.” 

Difficult to bridge but not impossible, and the rewards for leaning into these challenges are considerable. “The fruits of this sort of work I have seen personally,” Srinivasan says. “And that really motivates me to take the plunge, every time.”

Times Higher Education has partnered with Schmidt Science Fellows to develop a new ranking measuring universities’ contribution to interdisciplinary science. Find out how to participate.

Find out more about Schmidt Science Fellows.

The next generation of interdisciplinary scientists needs a research ecosystem that gives them the skills they need to work with scientists from other fields, as well as the funding and support to bring their research findings to society

Developing a 21st-century skillset for research’s interdisciplinary future

Early career scientists with ambitions of pursuing interdisciplinary research face many structural barriers. The funding process is complicated when there is a cross-disciplinary dimension. There are pressures to conform, to hew close to their chosen field. Support and mentorship are crucial to help academics transcend disciplinary boundaries.

Sir Keith Burnett, chair emeritus and academic council member at Schmidt Science Fellows (SSF), has considerable experience coaching early-career scientists on making such transitions. Working with the SSF mentorship team, he helps new fellows develop the skills and strategies they will need for an interdisciplinary career.

“We help them investigate where they can best pursue their change of direction and goals,” Sir Keith says. “They work through the options for their new institution and research environment. This a really challenging process in which the fellow makes the decision of where to go while discussing with us the scientific and practical challenges they will face.”

Interdisciplinary science thrives when researchers dare to step out of their comfort zone and follow their intellectual curiosity, whereupon they will inevitably need to develop new skills. SSF offers its fellows a comprehensive training programme to develop their skill sets – not all are scientific. Fellows will need to learn how to lead a team and build networks. Finding like-minded partners, with whom expertise can be pooled and shared, is critical, as is finding an institution that will support these endeavours.

“The key issue is finding a group that sees the benefits of having such talented scientists joining them and is willing to make the extra effort to make it a success,” Sir Keith says. “We are often delighted with the welcome our fellows get by research groups where they will be learning, sometimes from scratch, what they will need to contribute to this new area. The investigators in their new labs are usually just as excited to be bringing someone from a new area who can really enhance the research capabilities of the group.”

This is where interdisciplinarity can yield a comparative scientific advantage, accelerating innovation as many minds from different fields are trained on a project. The type of project interdisciplinary scientists choose matters, too, as does the way they sell it to others. A researcher’s scientific goals must inspire interest from potential collaborators and grants committees, convincing others that the project is worth the investment of time and money. But they must also inspire the researcher. This excitement – allied to SSF support – can sustain scientists through the periods of doubt and difficulty they will face in the early stages of their interdisciplinary careers. 

“To my mind, this is one of the trickiest and most rewarding parts of being an SSF mentor,” Sir Keith says. “You are always aware of the courage needed to keep going through this period, and seeing them emerge as a scientific butterfly into the new world is a real treat. I have now seen this happen in so many fellows.”

Times Higher Education&nbsp;has&nbsp;partnered with Schmidt Science Fellows to develop a&nbsp;new ranking measuring universities’ contribution to&nbsp;interdisciplinary science.&nbsp;Find out how to participate.

Find out more about Schmidt Science Fellows.

It takes courage, ability and talent to transcend disciplinary boundaries. But it also takes support. At Schmidt Science Fellows, early career scientists are given the training and mentorship they need to develop their careers in interdisciplinary science and pursue projects that tackle society’s biggest problems

Coaching the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists

Advocates for interdisciplinary science need only to point to the world’s biggest problems to make their case. Climate change, food insecurity and 21st-century healthcare are all issues requiring scientific collaboration across disciplines. But if science is to realise the potential of interdisciplinarity, it must incentivise it.

Megan Kenna, executive director of Schmidt Science Fellows (SSF), says this remains the biggest challenge in the sector, which is why the organisation has partnered with Times Higher Education on a new ranking for interdisciplinary collaboration.

“Our incentive structure for science is at odds with how we believe science is best conducted to tackle global challenges,” Kenna says. “The world’s challenges know no disciplinary boundaries, so we must find ways to encourage scientists to work collaboratively across disciplines to solve them. While there is broad support for interdisciplinary science across higher education, how universities incentivise, recognise and reward scientists does not always encourage interdisciplinarity.” Kenna hopes that the THE ranking will help universities chart their progress toward interdisciplinary excellence and reward those who do it exceptionally well.

SSF was founded to support interdisciplinary science, training and developing the world’s brightest scientific minds to work together across disciplines. That might mean training in a different field. It will certainly mean teaching academics to communicate their ideas clearly and make their academic writing digestible for a broad scientific audience. “You cannot do science well unless you are able to communicate across those disciplines,” Kenna says. “It is a key part of all of this.”

Kenna recognises the demands made of academics and their time. Tenure and promotion committees can help steer academics towards interdisciplinarity by assessing candidates on their ability to collaborate and the impact their writing has had outside of their field. The academic structure also needs to recognise that failure is a feature of scientific endeavour, not a failing. Kenna argues that innovation will be stifled in an academic system that does not support academics when high-risk, high-reward hypotheses don’t bear fruit.

“We encourage our fellows to fail early and fail often. But fail early and learn from it. In fact, this is genuinely the scientific process,” Kenna says. “Failure is just data to be put back into the system and then see if the next thing works. Science would be boring if every experiment worked.” But when these big ideas work, the results can be spectacular. 

SSF fellows have delivered successful research in understanding why some cells resist cancer treatments. They have used advanced quantum mechanical simulations to test the speed limit of magnetism, opening up an avenue for innovation in magnetic-based memory devices and electronic circuits. 

Kenna cites the Covid-19 pandemic as a step change in how research was pursued. “We were hit with a challenge that couldn’t be solved by one discipline and required collaboration – and fast collaboration,” she says, noting that barriers between disciplines fell overnight. The speed with which vaccines were developed and rolled out is a testament to the power of interdisciplinary science and how it can accelerate innovation.

Times Higher Education&nbsp;has&nbsp;partnered with Schmidt Science Fellows to develop a&nbsp;new ranking measuring universities’ contribution to&nbsp;interdisciplinary science. Find out how to participate.

Find out more about Schmidt Science Fellows.

Society faces problems of growing complexity, and we need scientists collaborating across disciplines in search of better solutions and faster results

How higher education can promote interdisciplinary science and enhance impact

What is artificial intelligence? How we answer this question can be influenced heavily by our past exposure to AI-related ideas and stories, and the concomitant hope and fears they narrate. The emergence of generative AI tools has pushed discussion of AI and its impact to the forefront of conversation, yet many of us still have only a partial conception of what AI is, what it can do, and how to ensure it is used responsibly. 


	How can we measure interdisciplinary learning?
	Collection:&nbsp;AI transformers like ChatGPT are here, so what next?
	ChatGPT and generative AI: 25 applications to support student engagement


This lack of clarity is a result of disciplinary fragmentation in how we approach AI, we argue. If we are to equip our students with the skills they need to truly understand AI as a technology and to embrace it as a force for positive social change, we must adopt a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to understanding and teaching AI.

The relationship between AI and interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinarity is not a post-facto imposition on our account of AI, but an inherent part of its origins. Many of the ideas we associate with AI have their roots in the older discipline of cybernetics. Derived from the Greek, kubernētikēs – “steering” to mathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener – cybernetics was the study of “control and communication in the animal and machine”. 

By bringing together ideas from fields as&nbsp;diverse as philosophy, psychology, biology, sociology and mathematics, Wiener envisioned a science in which technology was developed to work in concert with humanity, based on a holistic, interdisciplinary understanding of both. Cybernetics introduced the idea of an analogy between the computer processor and the human brain, claiming that a sufficiently sophisticated computer program could act as the intelligent “brain” of the computer. 

While cybernetics fell out of favour, much of its language and many of its ideas linger. Among mathematicians and behavioural and computer scientists, the focus around “intelligence” has shifted to autonomous “rational” behaviour, in which a programmed set of actions are selected based on a calculated expectation of maximised “utility”.

In the humanities, however, the analogy with a humanlike intelligent machine remained a strong theme. Futurists popularised the idea of the singularity in which machines achieved full sentience, often spelling the end of biological humanity either through transcendence or destruction. These ideas offer an effective vehicle for self-reflection – as AI serves as a mirror to humanity through which we can examine ourselves – but also describe a technology that bears little resemblance to the academic and practical reality of AI.

The real risks of AI

The problem, then, with this disciplinary divergence is a failure to appreciate that humans and technologies are continually and ineluctably in conversation and collaboration at every step of the development of AI. It becomes easy to oversimplify the risks of AI associated with sentience and replacement, presenting something of a red herring when it comes to the true risks.

The real limitations of AI lie with problems such as the way machine learning can replicate and amplify human bias, the way poorly chosen data labels can create unfair behaviours, and that organisations may place excessive trust in an AI system as objective without recognising the extent to which human decision-making, with all its merits and foibles, has governed how that data is selected, processed and acted upon.

Tackling AI risks with an interdisciplinary lens

To train students to responsibly engage with AI in society and the workplace, a genuinely interdisciplinary perspective is essential. 

Make understanding AI’s possibilities accessible to all students

First, it is necessary to impart an accurate understanding of modern AI’s true nature and possibilities in a manner that is accessible to all students, not just those with the mathematical and technical expertise to take advanced-level computing classes (where AI courses typically reside). 

This can come through the language we use to talk about AI.&nbsp;Terms such as “thinking” and “learning” can be properly recognised as analogous only when it is understood that AI is driven by mathematics formulated not to “understand” phenomena but to calculate patterns to generate accurate predictions. Arguably, AI is more “A” than “I”, and so by looking under the hood, so to speak, we can appreciate accurately how it can be used selectively to solve human problems, yet also recognise its limitations with a richness that the language of analogy does not provide. 

Engage students with how human and machine work together

Second, we must revisit the core insight of cybernetics – of human and computer working in concert; we must engage not only with the mechanisms of the machine but the lived experiences of the human. It is not enough to treat AI ethics as a postscript to a technical course nor to tell students: “Don’t be evil.” 

It is only by developing a deeper understanding of how humans live together, how they work and how they relate to their environment that we can find opportunities for AI to enrich the human experience. To achieve systems like this, we must look beyond the limited data of any problem at hand and leverage the expertise of other disciplines and data surrounding – and even seemingly unconnected to – the challenge to offer the best solutions. A single-track approach to machine learning without appreciation of the multifarious nature of human experience will not advance our quality of life; it will simply ensure that we repeat the mistakes of the past.

Interdisciplinarity is part of AI’s heritage and must be an integral part of its future if we wish to create a future where AI drives human flourishing. Our students must be equipped with this understanding because they will ultimately determine how AI is permitted to shape our future.

Elvin Lim is dean of the College of Integrative Studies and Jonathan Chase is assistant professor of computer science (practice), both at Singapore Management University. 

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Interdisciplinarity is a core part of AI’s past and future

To train students to engage responsibly with artificial intelligence, a genuinely interdisciplinary perspective – from the language used to recognising that human and machine work in concert – is essential, write Elvin Lim and Jonathan Chase 

Interdisciplinarity is a core part of AI’s heritage and is entwined with its future

“I never understood interdisciplinarity. How do you measure the learning?” 

This was the question that Daniel Seah’s mentor raised in 2021, when Daniel shared a decision to join the new College of Integrative Studies (CIS) at our university. The mentor began to recount an experience, as an undergraduate in the late 1970s, of being penalised for underplaying macroeconomics in favour of sociology in an essay for an economics and society module. 

This misgiving that interdisciplinary learning is hard to quantify is still common. It arises alongside an unmistakable professionalisation of interdisciplinarity &nbsp;(as it establishes foundations that involve specialised faculty and journals, for instance) at Singapore’s universities; all six autonomous universities in Singapore use the word “interdisciplinary” to describe their courses. So, can we dismiss interdisciplinarity as lacking a quantifiable core when it offers choices that serve our students’ professional interests in the long term?&nbsp; 


	Spotlight: unpacking academic interdisciplinarity
	Why we start undergraduate transdisciplinary research from day one
	Building the future: the case for inter-faculty learning


In Singapore, we are entering a decisive phase in our professionalisation of interdisciplinary studies. Our debates must now move beyond what interdisciplinary studies mean and why the approach is necessary. The applied curricula at Singapore’s universities are focused on real-world problems. Every Singapore university is committed to preparing its graduates for employment in a Web3 milieu.

Our focus now should be to explain how we will conduct – and measure – interdisciplinarity in its various forms for undergraduate learning. The goal is to convince employers that a graduate’s interdisciplinary degree, through integration, gives a compounded advantage to an entry-level employee. To achieve this outcome, we recommend an individualised approach. &nbsp;

Set undergraduates a final-year project

Undergraduates at Singapore Management University are guaranteed a second major. For example, a student pursues a first major in business management with a second major in psychology, alongside pre-assigned core curriculum modules that apply to all undergraduates. This is a familiar form of multidisciplinarity within established assessment structures. 

What if we allowed a student (let’s call her Jane) at an early phase of the degree journey to decide on a final-year project instead? This project is the basis on which Jane selects modules, which coherently integrate Jane’s core disciplinary expertise with at least one other discipline. These modules provide the academic rigour to support Jane’s final-year project. The completed project is evidence of interdisciplinarity. 

Let’s say that Jane’s core disciplinary expertise is sociology. The approved final-year project is a thesis on the cultural narratives of two photojournalists based in the Philippines and Spain, respectively. The project’s academic focus represents Jane’s intellectual interests. The thesis component of Jane’s interdisciplinary journey requires her to enrol in a combination of modules such as arts, culture and management, and the politics of South-east Asia. Jane will also take modules unrelated to sociology or arts management, such as user experience and digital product design.&nbsp; 

Faculty supervision of each student

This individualised approach, which receives careful supervision from at least one faculty member per student, is pioneered by the CIS at our university. A committee of faculty members oversees and approves every student’s proposed combination of modules to ensure meaningful integration to the final-year project. The outcome would be graduates who develop an agency through lifelong learning,&nbsp;having practised self-directed learning from the first day of their undergraduate experience.

Students’ project portfolios can evidence their learning

This extent of faculty oversight reflects a distinctive measurement of interdisciplinarity: demonstrating the practical skills of Jane’s chosen trade to a potential employer. In this case, Jane’s choice is a career as a UI/UX (user interface/user experience) designer. Apart from the thesis component, Jane must submit an individualised portfolio to show the practical value of the thesis’ propositions for an employer of UI/UX designers. 

This portfolio will be a website that chronicles the thesis’ journey from start to finish. The website will demonstrate, for example, Jane’s hard skills in Figma, Illustrator, JavaScript, CSS and HTML. The website also proves Jane’s skills, by reframing the thesis’ findings, through photography, user flow, user journey and wireframe. To a UI/UX employer, this portfolio demonstrates the graduate’s hard and creative skills in narrative design. The portfolio, in turn, is derived from Jane’s core academic interests in comparative sociology. 

A litmus test for value of interdisciplinary learning

This interdisciplinary approach is time-consuming and only viable when student intake is kept low – at CIS, this is about 50 students per year. The supervising faculties are assigned based on their training in interdisciplinarity. This approach is only one contribution to the professionalisation of interdisciplinary studies in Singapore. A litmus test will be the employers’ reception to this approach when our graduates enter the job market. 

The misgivings about the evidence of interdisciplinary learning have a provenance that precedes Web1. In the early 1980s, William Newell famously debated Thomas Benson’s polemic on the Five Arguments against Interdisciplinary Studies. This debate galvanised educators to validate their claims of interdisciplinarity through the professionalisation of curricula. 

Recently, a graduating computer science student contacted us after the final seminar of a digital law and technological innovations module. “Though I might never see you again, I will remember the valuable lessons I learned in your class (and try my best not to be a negligent software engineer),” he said. We had actively explored how legal proximity arises between people involved in the machine-learning life cycle and a victim of negligence. One such person is the software engineer who creates artificial intelligence models as a purely technical and backend task without considering the impact on users.&nbsp;&nbsp; 

How might we measure interdisciplinary learning? Here, the answer is clear: a student recognises how the law directly holds her accountable as a software engineer, and also protects her professional interests.&nbsp; 

Elvin Lim is dean of the College of Integrative Studies and Daniel Seah is assistant professor of law (education), both at Singapore Management University. 

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A benchmark of success for interdisciplinary learning is graduates who have the flexibility to examine their areas of interest and develop attributes that deliver practical value to future employers    

How can we measure interdisciplinary learning?

We are huge fans of undergraduate transdisciplinary research. From their first year until their graduation, we would like all undergraduates to engage in collaborative and cross-disciplinary research-led enquiry. 

Why? Because it gives them an early opportunity to experience knowledge discovery first-hand, putting their learning into action. Students also develop team-building, writing, digital- and video-research, and presentation skills. All these capacities are precisely what employers around the world are pleading for, and research of different types helps to seed an inventive and adaptable mindset in our students. 


	Helping students to see the future career value of their work-integrated learning
	Building the future: the case for inter-faculty learning
	Seven lessons from interdisciplinary general education curriculum reform


Most importantly, such a focus enables students to undertake projects, with appropriate teammates and faculty support, that are deeply meaningful to them. It matters what research they do, with whom and for what reasons.

In 2012, the Hong Kong government mandated an extension of three-year undergraduate degrees to four years. Each university created its own curricular expansion and the University of Hong Kong (HKU) worked through a complex collegial process to establish the common core. A six-course requirement for all our 17,000-plus undergraduate students, the programme opens up opportunities for students to experience enquiry-based learning and multiple forms of research.

Divided into four areas of enquiry – science, technology and big data; arts and humanities; global issues; and China – the 170-plus courses are designed specifically for this core curriculum. This is a key aspect of our role as a sandbox for pedagogical innovation and allows wide-ranging experimentation for colleagues across all 10 faculties. The innovations in design, teaching and assessment – financially supported by the university budget – benefit students and teachers; departments, schools and faculties; and the university as a whole.&nbsp; 

What does transdisciplinary research offer undergraduates?

With this background in mind, let us describe three of the primary transdisciplinary research opportunities for students.

The first is project-based work within the courses. Students have many chances to be involved in self-directed research projects, collaborating with classmates from across all 10 faculties. Projects cover such topics as digital humanitarianism, technology and cultural heritage, rural renewal projects, designs on the future and making (sense of) money. (The Areas of Inquiry tab gives access to course trailers and outlines.) 

The second arena for such research is undergraduate team or individual projects, conceived by the students. A faculty mentor provides light-touch guidance on projects as they are completed and prepared for public exhibit. At HKU, the Transdisciplinary Undergraduate Research Initiative funds this programme. 

The third set of research opportunities are projects of joint interest undertaken in partnership with NGOs, multinationals and other organisations. Current examples include collaborations with Arup (on lighting at night in Hong Kong), the Absolutely Fantastic Theatre Connection (creativity and transdisciplinarity), Press Start (on designing games for learning), Salween Experiential Journeys (digital storytelling), the University of Birmingham Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences programme and a global action lab with Utrecht University.

We believe that the sooner students experience creative, multidisciplinary, research-led thinking, the better. Such enquiry enhances social connectivity in their campuses and their cities, and enables methodological, conceptual and practical approaches for thinking among students. Critically, the connection between teaching and research for both students and faculty is strengthened across and beyond the campus.

In order to offer a more flexible and impactful curriculum, we have badged our courses with the UN’s sustainable development goals, created transdisciplinary minors, are working on global partnerships and will soon offer microcredentials in a compressed format. We are constantly reviewing our performance through student surveys, course evaluations for renewal, direct student reflections on projects, informal conversations and deep interaction with our external examiners.

What is next for undergraduate transdisciplinary research? There is significant space for us to build out the activities further, particularly in connecting globally to enable international collaborations and deepening engagements for our students. The rapid normalisation of video-conferencing during the pandemic has catalysed the possibilities surrounding global classrooms, and initiatives such as collaborative online international learning (Coil) further connect students and teachers to discussions, research and experiential learning within and beyond individual courses. We very much look forward to collaborating with both universities and other partner organisations on undergraduate transdisciplinary research as it becomes more established as a global best practice.

Gray Kochhar-Lindgren is honorary professor of humanities and co-facilitator of the Critical Zones Global-Action-Lab at the University of Hong Kong&nbsp;(HKU), as well as a founding director of Wild Studios Consulting and Creative Productions. He served as director of HKU’s common core from 2014 to 2022.

Julian Tanner is director of the common core and professor of biomedical sciences in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. 

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Hands-on knowledge discovery can give students the chance to put learning into action from the beginning of their studies, write Gray Kochhar-Lindgren and Julian Tanner

Why we start undergraduate transdisciplinary research from day one

The return to campus has been well documented as important in the post-disaster recovery period. And certainly, after several years of disruption to education, it has been exciting and cathartic to see university campuses full of students and the vibrancy of connections, especially when we know that young people have been prevented from partaking in various rites of passage and could be struggling to develop relationships and learn vital interpersonal skills. 

Nonetheless, Hepi and the Office for Students have noted that we still have to give students a reason to attend in person and cannot pivot back to pre-pandemic learning. We must instead take a holistic approach to the student experience, use of space on campus and learning. Matt Riddle of Hepi states: “Universities need a plan that puts emphasis on the value of the learning experience. With many lecture halls standing empty, universities need to think about how they earn the commute. This means not only giving learners a sense of belonging and community but also designing learner experiences around the things that make an on-campus experience distinctive.” 

As a criminologist and an engineer, we use the campus and its physical spaces in very different ways. In online meetings during lockdowns, we recognised the value of, and longed for, physical place and in-person teaching. We decided to launch an innovative inter-faculty way of working to provide students with an excellent student experience. We had each wanted to work in a cross-faculty way and randomly finding one another led to this being born. After all, there is so much that different disciplines can offer each other; sometimes you just need to give it a go.


	The challenges of creating a multidisciplinary research centre and how to overcome them
	Interdisciplinarity in teaching: what it is and how to make it work
	How to lay the groundwork for interdisciplinarity in students


We each run a capstone module for final-year students, one being an alternative dissertation in the social sciences and the other an engineering dissertation module. As part of our new, inter-faculty way of working, both the engineering and social science students are given three-minute pitches on projects related to the development and implementation of innovative engineering products or systems. Some examples are accessible cycles, solar power refrigeration, a circular economy for campus plastic waste, or urban wind energy. Students then join teams, with the engineers learning industry-standard system development skills and the social science students there to provide consultation, scoping out of the related literature, research questions, ethical considerations and identifying concerns relating to gender, race, class, disability, age, etc.

One of the projects of particular interest to our sustainability agenda is our campus circular economy, where we recycle plastic waste into new products for sale in our university shops. Not only is this giving students a real-world problem and allowing them to devise a strategy to solve it, but students working inter-faculty will imagine completely new ways to frame the issue by utilising their different skill sets and building something new.

The modules we have designed for the project are committed to the Liverpool Curriculum Framework, spanning all of its seven strands: inclusivity; research-led learning; active learning; authentic assessments; confidence; digital fluency; and global citizenship. They also provide students with the ability to make friends and colleagues from across the university, give them a physical space to do this and encourage them to develop key personal and professional skills. The students learn through a mixture of lectures, group supervision, peer-led meetings, careers-led sessions and off-site opportunities. They also have the chance to collaborate with industry partners globally.

Over the past three years students have had limited opportunities to meet new people and develop their confidence. We wanted to provide them with incentives to develop their people skills and be exposed to new ways of thinking from peers they were otherwise unlikely to meet. We must also understand the student experience in the context of the cost-of-living crisis, with many people unable to afford socialising.

Being able to confidently communicate with those outside your field is a key employability skill, and using enquiry-based learning in this way involves developing and nurturing relationships and negotiating aspects of project work. Students are expected to manage their own projects, show leadership and creativity, influence others through collaboration and take risks. They develop resilience, independence and the ability to think outside the box. They are also asked to show what went wrong, in addition to their successes, which helps normalise failure, with all the positives that can entail.

Our modules are owned by our respective faculties with our own learning outcomes and assessments, and yet the projects collide. Students from each faculty provide consultation, support and feedback to their colleagues and peers and log this continuously to an industry standard. The project helps provide students with academic knowledge, personal development and the competencies and skills that are needed in professional life, which, in turn, can help address inequalities in graduate employment.

To make such a project happen, you will need to start with a tangible issue that needs solving; students need to see a real-world problem. Matt is chair of our Education in Sustainable Development group, and Gemma is a faculty rep for the group, thus all our options in this project centre around sustainability. Identify interested stakeholders within your department, school, faculty and institution and have conversations with your education leads. Think about practicalities such as timetabling needs and other potential obstacles to inter-faculty working. Communication is key, both among academic colleagues and students. This way of working can be challenging, and it is important that students are supported throughout by regular timetabled group supervisions.

We have had interest in this way of working from other disciplines, faculties and colleagues nationally and are happy to be contacted by any interested parties.

Gemma Ahearne is a lecturer in criminology and Matt Murphy is a senior lecturer in engineering, both at the University of Liverpool, UK.

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Launching an innovative inter-faculty way of working has brought great benefit to students, especially in the post-Covid period, say Gemma Ahearne and Matt Murphy

Building the future: the case for inter-faculty learning

What is interdisciplinary?

Interdisciplinary education is all the rage, but we don’t all mean the same thing by that phrase. Sometimes, the term ends up being used synonymously with “effective education that prepares students for a complex world”, which is not helpful as it focuses on an outcome rather than the process. There is also an association between interdisciplinarity and the idea of a “broad” or “generalist education” or getting students to learn or be exposed to multiple or contrasting subjects. 

As with most buzzwords, neither those who praise interdisciplinarity nor those who complain about it can be assumed to be commenting on the same thing.


	Fostering interdisciplinary learning in large-scale doctoral programmes
	Designing postgraduate education as a means of sharing and developing academic and professional knowledge
	Developing research skills post-pandemic: creating space for reflection and conversation


So, it can be helpful to turn to scholarly definitions. Marilyn Stember of the University of Colorado defined interdisciplinarity as the “integration of the contributions of several disciplines to a problem or issue” where this integration “brings interdependent parts of knowledge into harmonious relationships”. 

She also contrasts interdisciplinarity with:


	multidisciplinarity, when several disciplines “each provide a different perspective on a problem or issue”; and
	transdisciplinarity, which involves an even higher level of integration, where the disciplinary perspectives themselves fall away, to be replaced by a “unity of intellectual frameworks”.


How to put interdisciplinarity into practice when designing courses

How does all this look operationally within a single course? Probably the simplest way to introduce interdisciplinarity is to make sure that we consciously build courses around identifiable complex issues and topics, rather than disciplines. 

Let’s take a standard intermediate economics course as an example – something like “Introduction to macroeconomics”. This will typically focus on teaching students a set of economic models and tools to analyse data and make predictions. In the same way, a course from psychology, maybe “developmental psychology”, will help students become familiar with the dominant theories in this subdiscipline. &nbsp;

These lessons are much-needed milestones in the training of economists and psychologists. But what if we were to take our eyes off training someone as a disciplinary expert, and focus on offering them access to interdisciplinarity? It would seem more expedient to begin from the other direction – from issues and aspects in the world.

We might be thinking of the impact of ageing on the human mind, or the domestication of rice, or climate change mitigation, or managing the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. These are issues and topics that, by virtue of their natural complexity, require integration of insights and tools from a variety of disciplines – perhaps economics, and psychology, and physics, and chemistry, to name a few – in order to build understanding or find resolutions to these multifaceted problems.

Nonetheless, most university professors have PhDs in specific disciplines and are rewarded and promoted for producing highly specialised contributions (ie, “impactful” research that gains the approval of their equally specialised peers). Inevitably, this means instructors who can embody that integration of insights and tools don’t grow on trees and these skills need to be developed.

Teaching in interdisciplinary teams

One way to overcome this hurdle is to teach in teams. But if the team is merely multidisciplinary – colleagues from different disciplines each providing distinct perspectives on a problem or issue – we haven’t quite achieved that desired integration either. 

The teams need to be true collaborations with a unity of purpose defined by the topic at hand. This requires professors who, while specialists in their own fields, are broad-minded in the way they approach the issues they care about and are not fastidious about disciplinary purity.

We are looking for colleagues whose involvement in such a course isn’t just so that they can “teach their share of physics, philosophy or computing” as part of a line-up of several topics, but instead to work together as a team, united by the joint aim of illuminating the shared topic for the benefit of the students. We need more academics able and willing to take this approach.

Interdisciplinarity in university programmes

So far, so good for the individual course. But what about at the programme level? 

One plea I should make is that we do not mistakenly think that just because something is good, it must be implemented everywhere. 

For students to profit from a topic-based interdisciplinary course, they will still need a good grounding in transferable foundational competencies, such as quantitative thinking, critical thinking, constructing written arguments, computational reasoning and empirical inquiry. 

Otherwise, those topic-based interdisciplinary courses end up pitched too low. What this means is that an interdisciplinary education at the programme level should comprise courses laying foundations in transferable competencies alongside explicitly topic-based interdisciplinary courses. 

Ironically, what this means is that administrators and designers of a programme may well need to resist a temptation to make all parts of their charge maximally interdisciplinary. Different parts of a programme are needed to serve different roles. 

Some parts will be highly interdisciplinary while others will be preparatory and only interdisciplinary within a narrow range. And yet others may be geared towards producing the highly knowledgeable specialists of narrowly focused fields, who we still need in a complex modern society. 

Bear in mind, the formal curriculum can only do so much. Beyond that, there are also important lessons to be gleaned from out-of-classroom experiential learning, projects, residential communities, global opportunities. All have their own parts to play in contributing to a modern interdisciplinary progamme.

If we do our jobs as educators and programme designers well, even the specialists should be ready and willing to work together with those from other specialisms, to help understand complex issues or to solve the problems facing humanity.

Loy Hui Chieh is an associate professor and vice-dean of external relations and student life in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at National University of Singapore.

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Loy Hui Chieh explains what true interdisciplinarity is and how to successfully embed it into university courses 

Interdisciplinarity in teaching: what it is and how to make it work

Saving the world is no easy task. But it’s one that academics all over the world have found themselves tasked with on multiple occasions over the past two years.

No single traditional “discipline” would ever have been capable of responding to the Covid-19 pandemic in the way we have: identifying the virus; creating tests that can identify those who are infected; developing and distributing multiple vaccines worldwide; and developing new technologies that allow us to return to something approaching “normal” life again.

For those who missed it, the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures introduced by Jonathan Van-Tam illustrated this beautifully. Mankind has historically made the greatest technological breakthroughs when facing a common enemy. Traditional academic boundaries are forgiven, and we are driven to do our best work by learning from our colleagues in other disciplines – but isn’t this exactly what the best industrial companies already do?


	Why interdisciplinarity is just like a fantasy role-playing game
	All together now: how to write an interdisciplinary research proposal
	Creating equitable research partnerships across continents
	&nbsp;


True interdisciplinarity is messy, disruptive and difficult to manage, but it is also where the best revolutionary ideas come from. Separate disciplines are there to help create and develop communities of practice: groups of experts with the same expertise who can support one another, progress their own discipline and teach the next generation. However, these discipline-specific groups will struggle to solve more complex, real-world challenges, and it’s never too early for universities, faculty and students to begin thinking about this.

If society is to succeed in meeting, for example, the Sustainable Development Goals, academic teams working across discipline boundaries will be needed. Here are some key things to consider when preparing staff and students to work and teach across disciplines:

Build an inclusive culture

The most important element of creating and sustaining multidisciplinary teams is building an inclusive culture. Students and/or staff who are thinking about such challenges must start by acknowledging that no&nbsp;one member of the team would be capable of solving this problem alone and agreeing that credit and funding for the work should be shared. Without clear agreement from the outset, such projects are doomed to fail from death by a thousand cuts.

In the UK, research funding calls often include the words “collaboration” or “interdisciplinary” in their title to reflect the funders’ expectation that more than one discipline will be needed to meet the challenge or build the required industrial capability.

Adopt the right approach

Of course, working in interdisciplinary teams is essential in the modern work environment. Encouraging students to engage with live projects (created using real business needs and curated by academics to ensure that students can demonstrate the required learning) is vital in providing them with teamworking skills and an understanding of how to work across academic boundaries.

The real world of work is never “fair” and seldom easy, so it’s important that students gain a taste of what is to come once they join their chosen profession. A&nbsp;“can&nbsp;do” approach to these projects and a willingness to learn new things is highly prized by industry and will provide graduates with skills that can be learned only by experience rather than by explanation.

Build appropriate teaching teams

Creating interdisciplinary teaching and learning teams can pose a particularly tricky challenge. Pedagogies that suit one discipline may not be the most appropriate for another. Learners are attracted to their chosen discipline not only on the basis of the material content of their course but also a shared identity with the culture and practices of certain associated careers.

Academics, meanwhile, are traditionally promoted as a result of their specialist expertise and (in the very best teaching universities) teaching excellence in their field. However, there are also many examples of academics in senior positions imposing what they believe “works” across multiple disciplines, resulting in poor progression and unhappy students for whom this pedagogical model is not a good fit.

Developing a multidisciplinary teaching and learning programme requires academics who are confident enough to acknowledge that they do not know everything. They also need to have the ability to work with colleagues and share their experiences of their students and their teaching. This is not a comfortable position in which to put oneself, particularly for more senior academics who want to preserve their status with colleagues. However, for those willing to step out of their comfort zone, the benefits are there to be had.

Acknowledging that there are very few instances where a direct transplant of teaching and learning methodologies is feasible between disciplines, working with colleagues with different students, who approach challenges differently and whose assessment strategy may differ wildly from your own, means there’s a smorgasbord of new tools and techniques to try. Collaboration between the disciplines to create a truly interdisciplinary programme will yield benefits for all involved.

With unprecedented evidence of the value of interdisciplinarity across academia, it’s time for all of us to seize the opportunity to develop new courses, extend our knowledge and, potentially, play a part in the next big breakthrough.

Georgina Harris is dean of the Faculty of STEM at Arden University, UK.

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Recent events have shown the necessity of working together, and it’s never too early for universities, faculty and students to begin thinking about this, says Georgina Harris

How to lay the groundwork for interdisciplinarity in students

When I think about interdisciplinarity, I cannot help but think back to the days when I was encouraged by a group of friends to join in with their role-playing boardgames. Every week I enjoyed these entertaining gatherings, immersed in fantasy worlds populated by incredible heroes, scurrilous villains and various otherworldly creatures. 

These adventure boardgames require each player to assume a specific role and become responsible for the actions of fictional characters, from fierce barbarians in charge of doling out damage and brave paladins acting as shields to mystical clerics who heal the wounds of their fellow party members.

The skillset and role of each character is significantly different from one another, but the fate of their homeland cannot rest in the hands of a single hero. They must join forces, embrace everyone’s unique powers and work together to save their world. 


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Nowadays, in real life as a learning professional, I still apply the lessons of those game sessions within the interdisciplinary teams I work in that solve challenges in the world of higher education.

The interdisciplinary nature of big projects often means that teams are put together consisting of numerous people who are passionate about their varying disciplines and have different strengths and knowledge areas. To succeed, this sometimes-disparate group of experts must align with the goals, tasks and expectations of the group by communicating and understanding one another’s roles. 

However, there are obstacles to be overcome from the very start in order to be constructive while working together. In my experience, the best way to face these challenges is to allow people to become “learners of everything” – providing opportunities to learn and get answers directly from experts via curiosity-led moments.

In role-playing games, the source of a wizard’s magic is intense study and discipline. They might oversee the analysis of literature because of their scholarly personality. In contrast, a monk, who is a master of martial arts, might guide the training sessions that will help the team to engage in an upcoming battle. Indeed, there is much crossover between these epic adventures and real-life projects – both involve exploiting the traits and qualities of all members and learning from each other. Keeping these role-playing games in mind, here’s my take on the best practices for successful interdisciplinary collaboration and specific things you will need to consider for each one: 

Choose your adventure (define the problem and objectives)&nbsp;

Coming up with a good definition is the first and most important step, especially for describing the problem/goal to anyone joining the team. The stated objectives must provide a specific solution to that problem. As a result, those objectives will be helpful in identifying the roles required for team members.
Things to think about: what problem do we want to solve? Is it too complex for one discipline to solve? What are we striving to achieve?

Explore your surroundings (conduct the literature research) 

During this stage, it’s important to consult numerous sources to gain insight and identify relevant disciplines. These resources will be useful for designing preparatory reading material such as benchmarks, infographics and summaries to share with team members.
Things to think about: where can we find information about this problem? Which are the disciplines we need for this project? What curated content should we share with our potential teammates?

Weapons training and inventory check (hold a warm-up session)&nbsp;

A kick-off session in an inviting environment that makes people curious about learning from one another will be crucial to fostering an interdisciplinary mindset. Encourage all parties to reflect on their backgrounds, expectations and roles through suitable activities. These should trigger creativity and promote flexible thinking to ensure all contributions and insights are valued.
Things to think about: what can we learn from others? What are our expectations of this collaboration? How can we trigger meaningful conversations about our backgrounds?

Elvish or Draconic? (find a common language)&nbsp;

Successful collaboration requires fully understanding your teammates – and technical language may be the main obstacle. Arranging quick, daily meetings is a good idea, with team members sharing experiences around projects and research to help everyone become familiar with the jargon and concepts from other areas.
Things to think about: what are the main concepts from our discipline? Which synonyms could we use to describe those concepts?

Sharing out the treasure (achievements and lessons learned)&nbsp;

It’s crucial that you take the time to share your findings within your interdisciplinary communities and other institutions through articles, videos or infographics. It also goes without saying that credit must be suitably and fairly attributed.
Things to think about: what are we going to share? What is the proper format for sharing this information? 

The people and characters that come along on these journeys are what make interdisciplinary work such a worthwhile adventure. Be sure to create communities of fellow “learners of everything” to keep curiosity alive and partake in ongoing conversations about your projects and the best practices.

Lorena Quilantán García is a learning architect in the innovation for education department at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico. 

If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week,&nbsp;sign up for the Campus&nbsp;newsletter.

Who’s the barbarian? Which one’s the wizard? Lorena Quilantán García offers practical advice on embarking upon your very own interdisciplinary hero quest

Why interdisciplinarity is just like a fantasy role-playing game

Interdisciplinary research is growing in popularity and is increasingly seen as essential. Multiple perspectives on research challenges will often lead to better outcomes. For example, in the BBC’s recent Reith Lectures on&nbsp;AI, it was proposed that “every AI centre that’s working ought to have a resident philosopher or ethicist on board to prick the consciences or at least remind people that this is important”.

A common obvious challenge of interdisciplinary research, though, is that one is not just stepping outside boundaries in terms of creating new knowledge but that one is creating (or at least amalgamating) research methodologies. This stepping out of our “comfort methodology zone” creates stresses and can cause risks for staff careers and department reputation.


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Additionally, differing values and language create barriers to successful collaboration and group cohesion generally. Given the above, how can we successfully establish and run interdisciplinary research teams?

A research culture of openness and fluidity

Culture is vital. It is important that the prevailing culture is open and egalitarian, empowering researchers to cross research areas, methodologies or communities without fear of failure. Ways in which one can create this is to remove as much unnecessary structure and formal process as possible.

Leadership should adopt an anti-structure, anti-committee approach allowing connections and groupings to be generated bottom up by researchers who find common interest. This means minimising the extent to which organisational roles are considered and to reduce or eliminate hierarchical line management structures.

Task-oriented teams are the main structure that should be adopted – bringing together individuals who can contribute to a research artefact no matter if they are academics, PhD students, lab technicians, software developers or professional service staff.

Within a team, all members should be willing to work on all tasks as time and ability permit. This “team not&nbsp;role” standpoint should permeate all areas. My lab even has a fridge-cleaning rota that all staff are expected to participate in (when we are not in a pandemic).

Another important aspect of the culture is to foster individual freedom. Researchers should be free to pursue any research field that they deem interesting through any means. Resources should be accessible with few barriers. We have found that nothing reduces efficiency and motivation more than having to go through internal bidding processes, especially when the available funds are small. Within my lab, our view is, whenever feasible, to simply say “yes” to every request we receive.

Hand in hand with this approach are the following constraints and responsibilities:

Staff numbers: The attributes of agility and minimal structure and processes constrain the size of the research unit. From our experience, we estimate that 80&nbsp;personnel total – all staff and PhD students – is about the limit. Beyond that, there is a loss of personal connectivity whereby culture and trust are harder to maintain.

Setting research targets: The main objective for research staff is to “make an impact” either on academia or society in general. One needs, though, to be careful about how objectives are measured. We use what we term the “Sistine Chapel” KPI: periodically, significant impact should be generated. Micro-measurements can harm a culture as staff start to view their relationship with the research unit as transactional and one that should be gamed.

A shared mission: A unifying totem is the last element of culture that we believe is important to success. All staff need to agree at some level on a common epistemological standpoint. For example, we take the Open University’s core mission around equity and openness and add technological innovation. All our research is thus broadly aimed at providing societal good through technology, and we expect and encourage our staff to be ultra-early technology adopters.

Hiring and retaining research talent

Successful researchers tend to be highly motivated and highly skilled. Within a multidisciplinary context, it is important that all staff also have an open attitude and are thus able to engage with new research frameworks and discipline value systems and semantics.

Seeking candidates who strongly align with the general unit values and totems is crucial. Over the years we have developed a hiring strategy that places an emphasis on the best places to advertise, which networks to use and how to best highlight what we offer.

Talent retention is a topic that is constantly explored and discussed by senior staff in my lab. Interdisciplinary researchers will often be highly sought after and, in some sectors, will be able to command far higher salaries in industry.

In addition to the cultural elements outlined above, our strategy for retaining staff is based on:

Taking career development seriously: Often overlooked in busy research environments, by senior and junior staff, it is important that all staff have clear career paths and that these are supported. Support will include:


	intensive mentoring on areas that need development, for example, funding acquisition
	understanding barriers at the level of the individual (eg, lacking a skill), unit (eg, biased judgements) and organisation (eg, challenging HR policies)
	ensuring that all academic staff have an “academic home” that they can grow into as their stature increases.
	&nbsp;


Understanding and proactively fighting for all staff needs: A key duty for all line managers and especially the head of the research team is to listen to staff and engage with all other areas to create the best possible work environment. Typical areas that we have discussed lately have covered: visas, working through a pandemic with ill dependants who live outside the UK and supporting staff who wish to engage with the wider community.

We are lucky that the Open University is a serious listener. Any serious concern we raise is either resolved quickly or leads to engagement with the institution’s executive. This has enabled us to create an interdisciplinary research environment that is highly regarded externally and where staff in all roles have overwhelmingly reported positive feelings about the work environment. I&nbsp;can personally say that this combination is richly rewarding.

John Domingue is director of the Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University.

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John Domingue explains how to foster a culture of openness and support that encourages and helps staff teams to pursue interdisciplinary research projects

How to successfully develop and run interdisciplinary research teams

Three PhD students share tips for embracing an interdisciplinary approach to research from the start of one’s academic career to aid progress towards tackling the Sustainable Development Goals 

Interdisciplinarity

Advice for bringing together multiple academic disciplines into one project or approach, examples of interdisciplinary collaboration done well and how to put interdisciplinarity into practice in research, teaching, leadership and impact

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Advice for bringing together multiple academic disciplines into one project or approach, examples of interdisciplinary collaboration done well and how to put interdisciplinarity into practice in research, teaching, leadership and impact

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