Release date: Oct. 31, 2002

Emory Draws Top Research Opportunities by Embracing Interdisciplinary Work

Contact:
Elaine Justice; 404-727-0643, ejustic@emory.edu
Deb Hammacher; 404-727-0644, dhammac@emory.edu

According to a recent story by The Chronicle of Higher Education, government agencies are stepping up funding for interdisciplinary research collaboration to solve today's most complex problems. But a growing number of foundations and non-profits also have seen the value of interdisciplinary research, and are supporting scholars at Emory University, who relish the chance to do collaborative work in everything from the sciences to the humanities.

"Serious interdisciplinary work is critical to Emory's mission," says interim Provost Howard O. Hunter. "We seek ways to remove barriers to research that crosses school and department lines in order to attract the kinds of translational scholars who are leaders in their respective fields."

For chemistry and biology professor David Lynn, the possibility of interdisciplinary work was a powerful draw to Emory from the University of Chicago. "There is a very clear sense of momentum and enthusiasm for the potential and the possibilities here," says Lynn. "There was the real sense of 'the ship is leaving the dock and you better be on board.'" His decision to change institutions was a big one, since his lab supported 12 graduate researchers, every one of whom came to Emory with him.

That sense of possibility helped Lynn's graduate students choose Emory, but it also made hiring two new faculty in biomolecular chemistry "the easiest recruiting job I've ever had," says Lynn. "There is an infectious and rewarding feeling about being part of something that's moving forward. These things are fragile and need to be nurtured, but Emory has been thinking carefully and strategically about how to use resources and the direction they want to go."

Now in his second year at Emory, Lynn has wasted no time in forging new interdisciplinary initiatives with colleagues at other universities in the area as well. The Center for Analysis of SupraMolecular Self-Assemblies is a collaboration between Emory, Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia and local industries that receives funding from the Georgia Research Alliance, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. The partnership is designed to complement what each of the institutions is doing.

Lynn, together with Andy Bommarius of Georgia Tech and Ichiro Matsumura of Emory's biochemistry department, started the center for Fundamental and Applied Molecular Evolution. This diverse group of Emory and Georgia Tech researchers gets together regularly to brainstorm research ideas. "The great thing about this group is that you hear about techniques being used in different areas that might spark a new way of looking at your own work."

Lynn doesn't just cross academic disciplines as a scientist but as a teacher as well, says Peter Bruns, vice president for grants and special programs at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The institute recently named Lynn one of 20 professors nationwide to receive $1 million over the next four years to bring scientific research into undergraduate classrooms.

Most of that research, says Bruns, will be interdisciplinary. He points to a recent report by the National Academy's National Research Council, known as "Bio 2010," stating that "interdisciplinary thinking and work [must] become second nature" for biology students in the future. "Lynn is doing a lot of this work right now," says Bruns, "and he explores how to do that across all levels of students; he's bringing them all into the show."

Emory has put interdisciplinary work on the front burner in the humanities and social sciences as well, with major research efforts such as Emory's new Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion (CISR) attracting $3.2 million from The Pew Charitable Trusts. "Emory's strong faculty and many leading thinkers in religion made it a natural place to put a center of excellence," says Diane Winston, program director for religion at the Trusts.

"Centers are ways to bring scholars from multiple areas of discipline into conversation with each other," says Winston. "Emory has been particularly successful at this. There were already many academics thinking and working on religion here, and the center has put them in closer touch with each other, which has the effect of deepening and extending their insights."

"What's interesting is that these collaborations have not occurred at the cost of the traditional disciplines," says John Witte, Robitscher Professor of Law and director of CISR. "To have refined interdisciplinary scholarship without a strong disciplinary core would be building in the air. It would be like opening an art museum of Dutch masters without a Rembrandt or van Gogh."

One of the newest efforts drawing both humanities and social scientists together is Emory's Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life (MARIAL) which studies dual wage-earning, middle class families in the South. Launched in 2000 with a $3 million grant from the Sloan Foundation, MARIAL operates as a kind of umbrella over a collection of research projects ranging from family story telling to working mothers' use of alternative medicine.

By design, researchers use both quantitative and qualitative methods, says Bradd Shore, Goodrich C. White Professor of Anthropology and MARIAL director. "Diversity of approaches is our greatest strength."

Some of MARIAL's investigations "are squarely in the tradition of the natural sciences—testing hypotheses with very large data samples," says Shore, while other work is "squarely in the 'qualitative' case-study mode." A few of the projects straddle both methods.

But Shore sees that ability "to bridge the classic divide that traditionally has separated the so-called hard and soft social sciences" as key to understanding the complex lives of the South's middle class working families.

Sloan Foundation program director Kathleen Christensen agrees. "There are crosscurrents and linkages across the research," she says. "We need to think very creatively and practically about how bridges can be built to be able to fully realize and harvest the richness of the research that's being done."

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