Interdisciplinary Science Collaboration

If I were creating a university today, it would look like this: 🎓A strong humanistic core the first year (and ideally the second). Students would engage deeply with the great books, but always through an interdisciplinary lens. Think: Plato’s Republic taught not just by a philosopher, but together with a historian and a political scientist who surface its ethical, political, and cultural dimensions. This year would include no specialization. All courses would be short modules, each requiring students to produce a rhetorical, argumentative, or creative piece by hand—literally. The foundation is analog so that students can explore big questions and discover their own voice without technological mediation. Rightly keeping the human at the center. 🎓Replace the credentialing model with four core focus areas. After the humanistic core, students would choose a developmental pathway by asking: “How do I want to contribute to society with my particular gifts?” The four pathways would be: - Economic Development - Creative Development - Scientific Development - Community Development Each exists not to manufacture mini-scholars in some theoretical domain but to cultivate the habits, methods, and practical judgment needed to build and sustain these areas of society. 🎓Keep humanistic formation tied to practical formation. Each year after the first would include one analog module for continued humanistic development. Students would keep a portfolio of “big questions” and their evolving answers, demonstrating how their values and intellectual growth inform their practical pursuits and the problems they want to work on. Great books with specific tie ins to their areas of focus would be the through line. This ensures the humanities remain at the center, permeating how students think about economics, art, science, and community—not as an add-on or distribution requirement, but as the moral and intellectual spine of the whole enterprise. 🎓Redefine what a university is for. The goal is not to secure a credential in a shrinking content silo. The goal is to equip thoughtful, virtuous, and capable people to contribute concretely to the world. True specialization (theoretical mastery of a discipline) comes in graduate school. The undergraduate years are for forming the person and cultivating discernment. Now, I think this places the proper telos of a university at the center while recognizing the need to equip people for the demands of the modern world. The humanities aren’t in conflict with job preparation or pitted against one another. They are the animus of a students contribution to the common good. Most important: it keeps education HUMAN while recognizing the need to learn skills and how to use tools that will be essential for future employment. A lot more to think through. Of course, this is not a comprehensive vision! P.S. I attempted to begin sketching this out visually but my 2 year old wanted to make her mark.

With so many structural barriers, how can universities facilitate true interdisciplinary research? I had a stimulating discussion today with Sir Bashir M. Al-Hashimi CBE FREng FRS, VP for Research and Innovation at King's College London, to address this thorny issue. It is generally understood that the next generation of ground-breaking, world-changing scientific discoveries are most likely to come by combining a wide range of academic expertise through new, “interdisciplinary” science teams. But the barriers remain clear and high: universities are, by and large, structured in neat disciplinary silos, with departments (and their precious budgets) typically separated from each other, even with their own separate campus buildings; subject fields often come with their own research practices, languages and philosophies that are hard to penetrate by outsiders; and the academic journals, prizes and grants that bestow such prestige on scholars and drive their careers remain stubbornly locked into narrow disciplinary silos. At King's, interdisciplinarity seems to be baked into the infrastructure, and has been facilitated by things like the "King's Together" fund which has been available for the last decade to offer seed funding for colleagues' cross-disciplinary ideas. The university's latest AI+ initiative provides 20 academic fellowships in a move to develop "a critical mass of multidisciplinary research talent to accelerate the development and adoption of AI", says Sir Bashir. The scheme is focused on AI development and application across all disciplines, including health, bioscience, physical sciences, social sciences, security, humanities, business and law. Times Higher Education is in a deep partnership with Schmidt Sciences and Schmidt Science Fellows to support universities to harness the power of interdisciplinary research - cutting across disciplinary silos to push forward the boundaries of knowledge and to help solve some of the world's grand challenges. Much lipservice is paid to the notion of interdisciplinarity, but with Schmidt, THE wants to tease out what "good" looks like. That's why we created the Interdisciplinary Science Rankings: https://lnkd.in/eU-NUnaH And it is why we have just launched the Global Higher Education Interdisciplinary Network: https://lnkd.in/ergupxAC Watch this space.... Picture: King's fabulous, Grade II listed, Bush House building on Aldwych, former home of the BBC World Service. Thanks to Tom Foulkes for joining the fascinating conversations.

Higher education is at a crossroads. The liberal arts ideal — breadth, integration, and formation of the whole person — is failing to deliver. Courses are siloed, mentorship is rare, and students often learn more outside the classroom than inside. Competency-based programs, while expanding access, risk becoming credentialing factories, especially in an era of AI-assisted work. Career-pathway programs provide technical skill but often neglect breadth, ethical reasoning, and labor-market literacy. On Substack, I propose a multipronged model for the 21st-century university. Students participate in small, mentored cohorts where they tackle interdisciplinary questions. They develop reasoning skills across quantitative, scientific, historical, humanistic, and ethical domains within integrated curricula. AI is used as a critical interlocutor, not a shortcut, while team-based, project-driven learning gives them real-world stakes. Each student receives longitudinal, personalized mentorship, maintains reflective portfolios, and explores structured career pathways that connect learning directly to the labor market. This approach challenges entrenched incentive structures, reimagines assessment and accreditation, and requires students and faculty to embrace uncertainty, rigor, and sustained intellectual engagement. The goal is an education that is meaningful, practical, and transformative — one that develops judgment, creativity, ethical reasoning, and self-knowledge, and prepares students for both their careers and civic life. Higher education, even at its most prestigious institutions, cannot remain as it is. Students deserve more than information delivery and credentials. They need an education that engages them fully, challenges them deeply, and prepares them for a complex, AI-mediated world. Read the full essay at https://lnkd.in/efQsEv_i

Years ago, professionals faced little pressure to evolve.   What they learned in college — and in the early years of their careers — often carried them all the way to retirement. But times have changed. Today, professionals must evolve constantly to stay relevant.   Not by switching careers every few years, but by upgrading their skills, unlearning and learning, and deepening their core expertise. This is the new reality — and our education system needs to catch up. Here’s where universities must evolve: ✔ Build interdisciplinary foundations, not academic silos Students don’t need to study commerce and science together, but they do need digital skills, AI literacy, and basic computing, irrespective of their degree. ✔ Merge classroom learning with real-world exposure Theory alone won’t prepare students. Structured internships, industry-led projects, and community work—especially in Tier 2 and Tier 3 regions—bridge the gap between learning and leadership. ✔ Encourage international and cross-cultural collaborations A semester abroad or a joint program doesn’t just add to a CV; it rewires how a student thinks. The focus should be on faculty quality, curriculum strength, and exposure, not just the country they visit. ✔ Teach students to understand every stakeholder Whether you’re building a policy, a product, or a social initiative, you must view the problem from the lens of the user, the community, the business, and the environment. That’s where ethical leadership begins. ✔ Integrate sustainability, equity, and social impact into every discipline These are not extra chapters anymore. They’re essential frameworks that future leaders in law, engineering, management, and technology must intuitively think through. When universities help students think broadly, question deeply, and apply courageously, that’s when they grow into professionals who can lead across sectors, not just within one. What’s one interdisciplinary skill you believe every student should graduate with, regardless of their degree? — Charu Jain #HigherEducation #FutureOfWork #InterdisciplinaryLearning #StudentSuccess #SkillDevelopment #EducationReform #UniversityLeadership

Somewhere right now, a PhD student is forcing themselves to read paper number 186 on a topic they secretly stopped loving 14 months ago… simply because they are “too deep to change it.” That was one of the quietest academic tragedies no one advised me about... When I began my doctoral study, I thought the goal was to find a research topic nobody had ever touched before. I was hunting for “originality” like it was buried treasure. What followed was intellectual exhaustion disguised as productivity (downloading hundreds of papers, highlighting PDFs I barely remembered, and convincing myself that adding words like “blockchain,” “AI,” or “sustainability” automatically made a topic innovative). Then something hit me during my own research journey across real estate, climate risk, spatial modelling, behavioural finance, and machine learning which is that the future of impactful research is emerging in the uncomfortable spaces between them. That realisation completely changed how I think about knowledge. Look carefully at the world’s biggest crises today. Housing inequality is now tied to climate adaptation, insurance systems, migration, energy insecurity, mental health, and political trust. Artificial intelligence is now shaping education, labour markets, ethics, creativity, misinformation, and even loneliness. Agriculture now involves satellite imaging, geopolitics, carbon markets, and predictive analytics. The world stopped behaving in disciplinary boxes a long time ago, but many PhD topics still sound like they were designed for a university brochure from 2009. No wonder so many students lose intellectual energy midway through their doctorate. They chose a “safe” topic instead of a living problem. What fascinates me is that the strongest researchers emerging today are becoming intellectual translators rather than isolated specialists. Funding bodies increasingly reward interdisciplinary work because complex societal problems demand hybrid thinking. Some research even suggests interdisciplinary studies often generate wider long-term citation influence because they travel across multiple knowledge communities instead of remaining trapped inside one academic tribe. The modern PhD student who understands climate science and finance, or AI and psychology, or theology and mental health, is positioning themselves very differently from someone repeating methodological routines that the literature has recycled for twenty years. Maybe that is the real lesson many students discover too late. A PhD topic should help you become difficult to ignore. The best topics explain tensions society is actively struggling with in real time. That is why before choosing a topic, I now encourage students to ask a harder question: “What important worlds are still failing to speak to each other?” I promise you that somewhere in that gap is where the next generation of powerful research is waiting.

Transdisciplinary AI Education: A Paradigm for the Future 🌍🤖 by International Baccalaureate In an era where artificial intelligence is reshaping every facet of society, how we educate the next generation about AI holds profound implications. The recent work on transdisciplinary AI education at @Neom Community School offers a compelling vision: AI is not merely a standalone subject but a thread woven into the fabric of a broader curriculum, fostering critical thinking, collaboration, and ethical awareness. 🧠💡 Why This Approach Matters? #Transdisciplinary education moves beyond traditional, siloed instruction by embedding AI across disciplines. Students engage not only with its technical dimensions but also with its ethical, social, and practical implications. An holistic understanding of AI’s role in society positioning students as creators of their AI-driven futures. 🌐🔍 1. 🌱 #HolisticUnderstanding: By integrating AI into a broader curricular framework, students grasp its relevance across fields—from ecology to ethics. This enriches their perspective, ensuring they see AI not as an isolated tool but as an enabler of interdisciplinary solutions.   2. 🚀 #ActiveEngagement: Through inquiry-driven projects, students transition from passive learners to active participants, shaping solutions to challenges that matter to them.   3. 🔧 #ExperientialLearning: Hands-on exercises, from coding robots to tackling real-world problems, bridge the gap between theory and application, preparing students to thrive in industry and academia.   4. 🧑🎓 #FutureReadiness: Middle school—a pivotal time for influencing career trajectories—is leveraged to inspire students to view AI not just as a field of study but as a catalyst for societal change.  Insights from Neom Community School Using the International Baccalaureate’s (IB) "Units of Inquiry," Neom Community School exemplifies transdisciplinary education. Students engage in collaborative projects like creating AI-powered museum guides or ecological classification systems, integrating technical skills with broader societal insights. 🏛️🌿 Challenges and Opportunities 1. 🧩 Curricular Cohesion: The integration of AI across disciplines requires careful design to avoid fragmentation and ensure learning objectives align across subjects.   2. 🧑🏫 Teacher Preparedness: Equipping educators with the tools and confidence to teach AI transdisciplinarily is critical. Collaboration among educators from diverse fields is both an opportunity and a logistical challenge.   3. 🌍 Equitable Access: Lowering entry barriers for students with varying levels of technical expertise ensures inclusivity and diversity in AI learning.  The transdisciplinary AI curriculum at Neom Community School highlights a transformative model for education—one where students not only learn about AI but also learn through AI, exploring its implications across the human and natural sciences 🤝💻 https://lnkd.in/eY-esUMF

People always ask me: "Why did you do BOTH Biomedical Engineering AND Genetics?" Wasn't one degree enough? Here's the truth: They're not redundant. They're complementary. And together? They're exactly what healthcare innovation needs. → Engineering teaches you HOW My BEng in Biomedical Engineering taught me: How to design medical devices. How to test biomaterials. How to think about mechanical systems, electrical circuits, signal processing. How to BUILD things. That's the implementation side. The "how do we create technology that works?" → Genetics teaches you WHY My Cambridge Genetics diploma taught me: Why diseases happen at the molecular level. Why patients respond differently to the same treatment. Why cancer develops resistance to therapy. Why personalised medicine matters. That's the biological side. The "what's actually happening in the patient's body?" → The intersection is where innovation lives Medical devices that adapt to patient genetics? You need to understand BOTH engineering AND genetics. Diagnostic tools that detect genetic markers? You need to understand BOTH biology AND device design. Personalised treatment delivery systems? You need to understand BOTH patient physiology AND engineering principles. That intersection? That's Clinical Engineering. → It made me a stronger STP candidate When I applied to the NHS Scientist Training Programme, I could talk about: Designing 3D bioprinted cancer models (engineering) Understanding how HER2 regulates gene expression in breast cancer (genetics) Bridging the gap between molecular understanding and clinical tools (both) That combination showed I think in systems. Not just devices. Not just biology. But how they work TOGETHER. For students wondering if they should specialise or diversify: If your interests genuinely span multiple fields? Study both. Don't let anyone tell you that's "unfocused." The future of healthcare needs people who can translate between disciplines. Who understand the biology AND the engineering. Who can design solutions informed by both. That's not unfocused. That's exactly what the field needs. And for international students: This kind of interdisciplinary background is VALUABLE in UK healthcare applications. The NHS STP wants people who think broadly. Who understand connections between fields. Your diverse knowledge base isn't a weakness. It's what makes you interesting. What's a "non-traditional" educational choice you made that turned out to be exactly right? #BiomedicalEngineering #Genetics #InterdisciplinaryLearning #STEMEducation #ClinicalScience #CareerAdvice #NHSCareers #ScientistTrainingProgramme

WHAT IF YOUR SCIENCE TEACHER LEARNED STORYTELLING AND ART TEACHER LEARNED AI? No one wakes up and thinks, "Today, I'll solve a pure physics problem." But they do think: "How do we get clean water to this village?" That needs engineering + sociology + local wisdom. Real problems are messy. They don't respect subject boundaries. Recently I came across Gitanjali JB's story. She walked away from corporate life to co-found HIAL in Ladakh with Sonam Wangchuk. Their students don't just sit in classrooms. They fix melting glaciers using old local methods while learning science. They grow food the traditional way while understanding soil and nature. They make art about climate change. Elders teach alongside modern teachers. It's real learning, solving real problems. That's what education should feel like. This is called interdisciplinary learning. Where different fields of knowledge come together to solve real challenges. It's not about knowing everything, but about connecting the dots between what you know. We educators need to do this too. A math teacher learning storytelling. A science teacher learning design. A language teacher learning technology. With data we can see that: → 93% want workers who can solve problems using multiple subjects, not just one skill. → 65% of new jobs will need skills from science, arts, and social work mixed together. At Nanoskool, we're upskilling teachers to break these boundaries and helping them become connectors, not just subject experts. Because students who thrive tomorrow will learn from teachers who evolved today. What's one skill you learned outside your "field" that transformed how you work? #Linkedin #ai #InterdisciplinaryLearning #science #TeacherUpskilling #Edtech #STEAM #india #tech #Nanoskool 

Have you heard of openproblems.bio? 🧬 It's kind of like Kaggle for single-cell biology. And it's a brilliant model of how the ML and bioinformatics communities collaborate. Single-cell analysis sits at a fascinating intersection: massive, tabular datasets meet cutting-edge ML meets the messy reality of biology. But here's the challenge: ML researchers love Jupyter notebooks, while biology demands robust, reproducible pipelines for processing data. Different tools, different cultures. OpenProblems.bio bridges this gap brilliantly. It transforms core single-cell challenges into living, community-run benchmarks where anyone can: ✅ Submit methods in Python or R (no pipeline expertise needed) ✅ Compare results fairly with standardized datasets and metrics ✅ Access everything openly, including published results and methods The secret sauce? A powerful three-part ecosystem: * Viash converts scripts into reproducible pipeline components * Nextflow orchestrates complex workflows * Seqera provides the platform for elastic cloud execution on AWS What excites me most: this is **FAIR open science done right** Complete transparency, version control, quality checks built in, and a framework that welcomes contributions from both communities without forcing either to abandon their tools. Tasks range from dimensionality reduction to perturbation prediction, with new benchmarks continually added by the community. If you're working in computational biology or ML for life sciences, this is infrastructure worth knowing about. The future of biomedical AI needs exactly this kind of collaborative, rigorous foundation. Thanks to Robrecht Cannoodt and the openproblems.bio community for collaborating on the blog: https://lnkd.in/gpNJNd2r #Bioinformatics #MachineLearning #SingleCell #OpenScience #Benchmarking

The Wellness Industry Doesn’t Have a Motivation Problem — It Has a Literacy Problem We’re living through the most paradoxical moment in the history of wellness. We have more tools, tech, data, supplements, classes, retreats, cold plunges, saunas, breathwork sessions, and “experts” than ever before… Yet: Burnout is rising Sleep quality is falling Hormonal disruption is increasing Stress is chronic Cognitive fatigue is becoming normal Long-term health outcomes are declining The issue isn’t access. It’s not motivation. It’s not even investment. It’s literacy. Wellness today is fragmented. Most professionals are trained in pieces, sleep, nutrition, training, breathwork, recovery, mental health, coaching, but not in how these systems interact. And when you don’t understand how systems interact, you can’t create meaningful change. We see it every day: Sleep advice with no circadian literacy Stress programmes disconnected from hormonal load Nutrition strategies ignoring recovery debt Fitness approaches that break the nervous system Biohacking without biological understanding Mindfulness delivered without autonomic context “Performance” without environment design The industry is full of tools. But very few people know how to connect them into outcomes. This is the literacy gap. And it’s the gap we built the Future Wellness Academy to fill. What We’re Doing Differently We didn’t create another course. We built the first integrated, cross-disciplinary wellness education system, rooted in human performance science, circadian biology, behavioural psychology, environmental design, and coaching practice. Our 12 modules were built for the industry the way it actually operates, interconnected, messy, human, and biological: Sleep & Circadian Nutrition & Micronutrients Stress & Mental Resilience Recovery & Regeneration Physical Activity Hormonal Balance Community & Social Connection Breathing & Oxygen Utilisation Environment & Habit Architecture Data-Driven Personalisation Cognitive & Neurotransmitter Optimisation Financial Wellness This is not content for content’s sake. It’s literacy for real-world impact. Our mission is simple: Elevate the standard of wellness education. Create professionals who can integrate, not just instruct. And build a new generation of coaches, consultants, and practitioners who understand human performance as a connected system. Because when literacy increases: Outcomes improve. Clients change. Organisations transform. Industries evolve. The future of wellness won’t be built on tools. It will be built on literacy. And that’s exactly what we’re here to deliver. If you'd like to know more about the Academy and how it could benefit you, individually as a practitioner or as an organisation, feel free to drop me a line.