John Hennessey, Ph.D.
President, Stanford University
When multiple disciplines come together and different perspectives are
shared, there's no limit to the collaboration, creativity, and innovation that
can occur. Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking thrives. In the essay
that follows, John Hennessey describes the success at Stanford University in
creating a multidisciplinary approach to research and teaching in the
biosciences.
In the late 1990s, two Stanford professors, one a physicist and the other a
biologist, began collaborating on manipulating and measuring forces associated
with motor proteins. They so enjoyed working together that they convened a
broader faculty group to discuss how the university could foster more
collaborative research and teaching in the biosciences. A principal outcome of
this initial meeting, and many subsequent ones, was a university-wide research
and teaching program, called Bio-X, which is dedicated to bringing basic science
to bear on critical biomedical and other human needs through the fostering of
multidisciplinary efforts.
The interdisciplinary research being carried out at Bio-X reflects the
reality that significant biomedical problems cannot be solved without the
coordinated application of tools and knowledge from many disciplines. An example
is tissue engineering, which brings together cell biology, molecular biology,
materials science, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, electrical
engineering, and clinical medicine.
At the core of Bio-X are thirty-eight faculty researchers whose offices and
labs are collocated in the Clark Center, a new, state-of-the-art building that
has become a community center for science. These faculty come from more than
twenty different departments, including genetics, computer science, physiology,
neurology, mechanical engineering, statistics, and medicine. Connecting with
this faculty core are various networks of other Stanford faculty—Bio-X currently
has more than three hundred faculty affiliates in fifty departments. It is this
broad universe of faculty and the more than 1,500 affiliated students and
postdoctoral scholars who make up the whole of Bio-X. Frequent scientific events
in the Clark Center, shared core facilities such as supercomputers and imaging
instruments—and first-rate coffee—draw in collaborating researchers from all
over campus and around the world.
Bio-X was from the beginning a network—a network of potential entrepreneurial
collaborations. These Bio-X networks arise and expand from the continuing
departmental affiliations of the Clark Center residents, from lectures designed
for scientist and nonscientist alike (including the popular "Talks in English"
series), and from an innovative program that provides seed funds for students
and faculty engaged in interdisciplinary research (the Interdisciplinary
Initiatives Program), which operates not unlike seed or angel funding in the
entrepreneurial business world. These forty grants, with another twenty about to
be awarded, have fostered work from ethics to elephant communication, surgical
robotics, vaccine development, coral reef ecology, and neural prosthetics. Bio-X
also fosters collaboration through grants of graduate and postdoctoral
fellowships for interdisciplinary research and education; these fellowships
attract the best young scholars in the world to Bio-X. One of the added benefits
of the Bio-X seed grants and fellowships is that faculty who serve on the
selection committees find themselves learning from one another about the
cutting-edge bioscience issues touching their various disciplines.
Building Bridges
In addition to its role as a central resource for Stanford faculty and
students, Bio-X is playing a key role in building bridges between the university
and a wider community of scientists, public and private industry
representatives, and policymakers. For instance, every year Bio-X hosts a major
symposium on contemporary bioscience topics of widespread interest. Last year's
topic, "Watching Life" (about advances in imaging), drew hundreds of attendees
from Stanford, other universities, and biotechnology corporations, and this
year's symposium on "Regenerating Life" is expected to do the same. In addition,
the Bio-X Advisory Council, whose members include executives, investors, and
scientists associated with medical, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical companies,
carries on a periodic dialogue with Bio-X faculty. This dialogue helps the
university know what is happening in industry and vice versa, leading to
increased opportunities for collaboration, technology transfer, and donor
interest. In this regard, Bio-X is able to take advantage of Stanford's history
of good working relationships with industry in other areas of technology.
What We've Learned
We have learned much about interdisciplinary bioscience research and
education since Bio-X began. First and foremost, the success of Bio-X is
attributable to its origins as a faculty-driven effort. A promising
interdisciplinary effort is not likely to flourish if it's imposed on a team of
researchers. For example, experts from different fields need to take the time to
learn how to bridge their field-specific "cultural" and linguistic styles, and
this effort requires a personal commitment and willingness that would be absent
if imposed top-down. The university's role is to build upon the faculty's
enthusiasm for a new interdisciplinary scientific opportunity by providing
adequate resources and support. We were fortunate at Stanford to be able to
construct the Clark Center around the needs of Bio-X. We are also fortunate to
have all of our schools, including the Schools of Humanities and Sciences,
Medicine, and Engineering, collocated on one contiguous campus and to have a
rich history of faculty interaction across that campus.
Another lesson came from our early decision not to predefine the research
themes within the Clark Center too strictly. Our goal was to achieve critical
mass within the Clark Center in certain areas while encompassing the broadest
possible spectrum of biological research areas. A related early decision was to
not allocate all the space in the Clark Center on day one, but to preserve space
for future "hot-shot" hires and to allocate some space as hotel space, which
could be allocated on a time-limited basis to promising new activities. Faculty
recruitment has in fact gone exceedingly well, even in competition with other
fine universities. Often the new recruits have commented that it was the
excitement of Bio-X and the Clark Center that drew them here.
Benefits Across Disciplines
Since the establishment of Bio-X, Stanford faculty have initiated similar
interdisciplinary programs in the international and environmental areas.
Increasingly we believe that in research, finding solutions to complex and
difficult problems—from overcoming disease to finding alternative eco-friendly
energy sources to developing policies that increase prosperity and reduce
societal conflict—requires collaboration among experts from multiple
disciplines. These kinds of problems will not succumb to the efforts of a single
researcher with one disciplinary skill; they are too large and too complex. In
addition, many of the most important opportunities for advancement lie not in
the center of a discipline but at the boundaries and interstitial spaces between
disciplines. Universities must become more adept at exploiting such
opportunities.
In education, too, Stanford increasingly sees the need for students,
especially at the graduate level, where training tends to be relatively focused
and narrow, to have broader skills and exposure. These students reap
longstanding benefits from an introduction to, for example, the principles of
modern businesses or the legal concepts surrounding the ownership of
intellectual property or the uses and potential of high technology. Our
graduates, in their various roles in society, are increasingly being asked to
work in teams that combine different skills sets. We believe that having a
better understanding of related disciplines and some common vocabulary will make
our graduates, whether scientists, humanists, engineers, lawyers, doctors,
educators, or corporate executives, more effective as team members and team
leaders.
Stanford remains solidly committed to deep disciplinary expertise. It also is
committed to multidisciplinary collaboration and to bringing teams together to
help solve seemingly intractable problems. Thanks to the foresight and energy of
Stanford faculty who simply wanted to work together on a problem of common
interest, Bio-X came into being, and thanks to its successes, Stanford has a
better understanding of how to mount multidisciplinary programs in other areas.
While universities alone cannot provide complete solutions to society's most
difficult problems, we can play a large and important role. At Stanford, we are
proud to be fulfilling our historic commitment to—in the words of Jane and
Leland Stanford—"promote the public welfare by exercising an influence on behalf
of humanity and civilization."
This essay is an excerpt from the
Kauffman Thoughtbook 2007. To view a table of contents for the 2009 edition, or to order a printed copy of the publication,
please visit our 2009 Thoughtbook page 
