Our Interview with Andrei

Continued from front page

Convergence: When the group of research leaders meet and engage in dialogue, what kinds of topics are covered?

Ruckenstein: We are looking at where we can collaborate, where we can get together. It’s tricky, because we are all competing for money and projects in many of the same realms of fundamental scientific research.

For the start we’ve tried to focus on things where the advantages of collaboration are clear, where moving together is likely to be a win-win proposition for all involved.

Some of the questions on the table are: how could we share research infrastructure such as machinery, electronic shops, chemical screening and fabrication facilities? How might we build a common computational infrastructure (supercomputer centers) and common facilities for storing, managing and servicing the relevant computer hardware (data centers or server farms)?

On the computational side, we are all struggling with the same kinds of issues, with a growing need for larger computers to accomplish the number crunching involved in virtually all large science and engineering projects, as well as in data mining in life sciences and social sciences.

Building the adequate and scalable facilities for storing, powering and cooling large computer clusters is on everyone’s mind. This is clearly an area in which we could collaborate, and we have begun discussing the possibility of building a shared facility, a server farm (data center), to service the entire Greater Boston area.

Convergence: What are some of the other points of convergence?

Ruckenstein: The $1 billion Life Sciences statewide initiative proposed by the Governor is going to focus in part on the research talent of our universities. We have been discussing how we might come together and create a mechanism through which both public and private universities may gain access to some of this funding.

We have been posing a number of other questions that we might want to address together, as a community, as part of the John Adams Innovation Institute leadership group. What’s the best way to leverage the research talent in Massachusetts? What is the optimal way to take advantage of this investment? Is there a way to create a research infrastructure that would facilitate interactions between researchers of different institutions, both public and private?

Convergence: How would you describe your evolution as a scientist?

Ruckenstein: I am a theoretical physicist by training [M.S. in Physics from Cornell University and an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard University, president of the National Science Foundation-funded Aspen Center of Physics]. I started my career by working in the area of condensed matter physics. But for the last several years, I have delved into biology-driven research  [founding Director of BioMaPs, an interdisciplinary program launched in 2000]. Also, I have been invested in promoting interdisciplinary interactions among biologists, chemists, physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians and clinicians on biology- or biomedical-driven problems.

As I already mentioned earlier, the prospects of being a science administrator were not on my radar screen.

Convergence: What have you found to be the most important factors in successful collaborations?

Ruckenstein: Everyone usually asks: What’s in it for me? Scientists collaborate best when they are driven by a common interest in solving a particular problem. I believe in the Manhattan Project model – where you bring the most powerful team together to address a large problem that could not be easily solved by any of the individual investigators. The large amounts of resources placed into interdisciplinary collaborative teams working on big problems have had a positive impact on people’s commitment to working together.

As an aside, the one aspect of the increasing attention placed on “interdisciplinarity,” which I don’t find emphasized enough, is that the solution of many of the difficult problems driving interdisciplinary research is likely to require completely new techniques and conceptual breakthroughs in the conventional disciplines. So, while interdisciplinary research implies the breakdown of boundaries between the traditional discipline, strong interdisciplinary programs require strong traditional disciplines: there is no interdisciplinarity without the disciplines!