Collaboration in science highlights the need for developing leadership in multidisciplinary research, bridging gaps across campuses, countries, and continents.
This workshop highlights common barriers that may arise in large-scale collaborations and offers ways to shift from a traditional hierarchical model, based on power and control, to a team-centric model that promotes a culture of information-sharing and can lead to more new ideas.
According to moderator Sadye Paez, multidisciplinary research provides an opportunity for people from different disciplines to work together by making contributions that draw on their disciplinary knowledge. From there, scientists can engage in interdisciplinary and, eventually, transdisciplinary research, or establishing a unity of intellectual frameworks that go beyond the disciplinary perspectives.
“I would argue that the process toward interdisciplinary research requires first engaging in multidisciplinary research because it requires you gaining a perspective and understanding of others' research before you can begin to synthesize it,” she says.
Hear how researchers from many career stages engage in and optimize multidisciplinary research and how you can learn from their experiences to better participate in your own collaborations across disciplines.
Speakers
Sadye Paez, PhD, PT, MSPT, MPH
Sadye Paez is a program director and senior research associate at The Rockefeller University. She previously was an assistant professor at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Paez’s main research interests lie in the intersections between clinical and translational genomics research with public and global health promotion and disease prevention. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Central Florida in micro- and molecular biology and her PhD in biomechanics and human movement studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a licensed physical therapist with more than 15 years of clinical experience.
Stephanie Marcus
Stephanie Marcus is a PhD candidate at The Rockefeller University studying the neurobiology of vocal production in primates. She received her undergraduate degree in molecular biology and biochemistry from Rutgers University. She serves as president of the Women and Science Initiative at The Rockefeller University.
Lauren Shalmiyev, MPH
Lauren Shalmiyev is the administrative coordinator for the Jarvis Laboratory at The Rockefeller University. She previously was the clinical site coordinator at the Bronx Prevention Center at Columbia University. Her main research interests lie in chronic and infectious disease research. She received her undergraduate degree in neuroscience from Binghamton University and her MPH in epidemiology from Emory University.
Andreas Pfenning, PhD
Andreas Pfenning is an assistant professor of computational biology at Carnegie Mellon University. Pfenning's laboratory studies the genetic basis of behavior and neurological and psychiatric disorders by combining computational and experimental techniques. He received his undergraduate degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD in computational biology and bioinformatics from Duke University. He completed his postdoctoral training in the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Alexander McCampbell, PhD
Alexander McCampbell is a senior director at Biogen. He previously was a research fellow at Merck Research Laboratories. McCampbell’s main research interests lie in neuromuscular diseases. He received his undergraduate degree in biology from Illinois Wesleyan University and his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his postdoctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Atsushi Iriki, PhD
Atsushi Iriki is a visiting professor at University College London and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), in Singapore, and an adjunct professor at Keio University, in Japan. He is also a senior fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, founding co-director of RIKEN-NTU research centers, an overseas fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, in the United Kingdom, and president and CEO of RIKÆNALYSIS Corporation (RIKEN Venture, Japan). In 2004 he was appointed team leader of the Laboratory for Symbolic Cognitive Development, a part of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute and, since 2018, the Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research, where he aims to discover evolutionary and neurobiological mechanisms that led the human mind to emerge in the primate brain. He received his PhD in neuroscience from Tokyo Medical and Dental University.
Erich D. Jarvis, PhD
Erich Jarvis is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the Head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language at The Rockefeller University in New York City. He previously worked as a professor at Duke University. Dr. Jarvis investigates vocal learning in songbirds and other animals as a model for understanding spoken language in humans. He integrates computational, behavioral, physiological, and molecular techniques to explore the neural genetics of vocal learning and the evolution of this complex behavior. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and mathematics from Hunter College, his PhD in neuroscience, f completed postdoctoral training from The Rockefeller University.
