Conference Report
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Interdisciplinarity Works Best Across Institutions The International Conference on "Interdisciplinarity Revisited: Materials Research as a Case S t u d y " was held August 30-31, 1999 at The Pennsylvania State University. The Conference was organized and chaired by Rustum Roy, founding Director in 1962 of Penn State's Materials Research Laboratory, who had also organized the first international interdisciplinary materials science and policy meeting in 1969, also held at Penn State. He was assisted by his colleagues: L. Eric Cross, Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering; Robert E. Newnham, ALCOA Professor Emeritus of Solid State Science; and Della M. Roy, Professor Emerita of Materials Science. In exploring the history, practice, and Status of interactive research, the participants of the Conference discussed collaborative work among researchers from different disciplines;* from various types of institutions; and from different parts of the sequence of research activities, that is, from "knowledge" through application to the final product. This model was depicted as "I 3 R" (Figure 1). Richard Brook, Chief Executive of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Center in the United Kingdom, suggested the addition of a fourth element: international, that is, I4R, recognizing the globalized nature of much current research. R. Roy, in his opening address, used the famous quote from Ortega y Gassett+ as he "preached" the case for interdisciplinarity. The Conference focused on four angles: What historical and current driving forces are behind interdisciplinary materials research, what researchers have learned from experience, what forces help further this type of research, and what recommen* Participants not only crossed the physical sci ence disciplines but also others, including social science and integrative mediane. +
"The need to create sound syntheses and systemizations of knowledge...will call out a kind of scientific genius which hitherto has existed only as an aberration: the genius for Integration. Of necessity this means specialization, as all Cre ative effort does, but this time, the [person] will be specializing in the construction of the whole. The momentum which impels investigation to dissociate indeftnitely into particular problems, the pulverization of research, makes necessary a compensative control—as in any healthy Organ ization—which is to be furnished by a force pulling in the opposite direction, constraining centrifugal science into a wholesome Organiza tion...the selection of professors will depend not on their rank as investigators but on their talent for synthesis." —Jose Ortega y Gasset, "Mission of the University"
MRS BULLETIN/NOVEMBER 1999
Figure 1. The model shows the relationships of departments to interdisciplinary units described by R. Roy in 1977, which K. Marre (Assoc. V.P. forGraduate Studies and Research at the University of Dayton) referred to as the most comprehensive model yet presented.
dations can be made by the participants. After two days of presentatio
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