Ruth Müller talks about challenges to interdisciplinary research.
Image: Uli Benz / TUM
It seems that new scientific institutions and research projects are all about "interdisciplinarity". Is it all hype? It is not all hype, not at all. We are increasingly encountering issues that cannot be resolved using the methods of any one discipline. As a matter of fact, interdisciplinarity was already enabling major leaps forward even before it was intentionally promoted: After the Second World War, several physicists transferred to biology in the wake of the atomic bomb shock. This influx significantly contributed to the birth of molecular biology, as they applied their physics-based perspectives to biological research questions. You studied an interdisciplinary research center in Sweden and used interviews to identify which obstacles researchers face when conducting interdisciplinary work. Has something gone fundamentally wrong at this center? Not at all.
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