Nobel laureate and Montgomery Fellow Thomas Cech related the challenges of fostering interdisciplinary scientific research in his keynote lecture on Tuesday afternoon in Filene Auditorium. In the lecture, "Exploring the Edges Between Scientific Disciplines," Cech also described his discovery of the catalytic properties of RNA and his current endeavors as president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The lecture marks the end of the Montgomery Endowment's fall series of visiting scholars.
Cech said that at most universities, faculty view the scientific departments as "silos" that are walled off from one another. He said that faculty are inclined to work in small groups to maximize efficiency.
There are four principal institutional barriers that limit interdisciplinary collaboration at universities, Cech said. In any collaborative effort, researchers from two or more departments can make equally valuable contributions, but only one author is listed last, the most prestigious position on a paper. Cech explained that seeking tenure, professors are likely to work only on the projects for which they will receive the most credit.
"Not everyone can be last author," Cech said.
Likewise, Cech said that the career and reward structure of the university system favors projects initiated within a single department, rather than through an interdisciplinary approach. Rewards are conferred upon those people or departments who receive grants, but grants are usually given only to one principal actor and not an amalgam of biologists, physicists and engineers.
The physical separation of departments on a campus hinders cooperation, Cech said.
At Dartmouth, Cech explained, the physics and engineering departments are located on opposite sides of the campus, and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is not in Hanover, so a biologist on the central College campus would have to travel to West Lebanon to collaborate with researchers there. Cech said such obstacles do not just limit faculty research, but also affect students' activities. University rules can prevent students from exploring different departments; students may be limited to taking courses within a narrow range to fulfill their major requirements, or find that if they take a class in a different department, they may not receive credit.
In his current role at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cech is experimenting with ways to promote interdisciplinary studies. A centerpiece of the institute is its Jones Farm Campus, which opened in 2006. The campus has no individual departments; researchers are organized in teams of six or fewer people. Cech said that the small team structure avoids the problems inherent in large laboratories, where researchers confine their interactions to their immediate groups. Cech also introduced the concept of "productive collisions," or spontaneous interactions among people, saying that even the position of a coffee machine affects interdisciplinary collaboration.
This type of collaboration was partly responsible for his famous RNA discovery, Cech said, in which he incorporated both biology and chemistry in his research.
