We have been talking of inter-disciplinary research since long. But I have not come across very many examples. Any suggestions in this regard?
Debi, I also believe that it is happening or it is a must in this new generation learning scenario, but do not have very realistic examples to me...
There are common subjects between all areas. For example, Marketing researchers have published articles in service quality, in collaboration with researchers specialized in Nursing.
Interdisciplinary research has been happening and it is a necessity now a days. One of our colleague from Graphic Technology is collaborating with Chemistry to develop vegetable based colors to use in printing. We are collaborating with biology people to develop and use vegetable based cutting fluids in machining. Our automation collaboration between electronics engineers and manufacturing engineers. With so many technologies involved it is inevitable to have interdisciplinary research.
@Debi, it really happening.For example, in modeling and control of a chemical process, the research team consists of mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, chemists, control specialist...! Today, the most of research are interdisciplinary !
Such example, a marvelous one is technology of bionic arm! Pure interdisciplinary research!
http://science.howstuffworks.com/bionic-arm.htm
In my observations exept regular and objective demands of cooperative research in science, such issue as Impact Factor (HI) is also directly leading people to research and publish cooperatively, because of points collected for personal evaluation, faculty or university evaluation. From my perspective in humanities or social sciences interdisciplinary spectacular researches are rather rhetoric. For example, as I observed even working across a view public universities in Poland, we pedagogs, special pedagogs, andragogs, special andragogs tend to lead research withing own group and discipline, what is a little bit restricting.
In my opinion real world world problems are inherently interdisciplinary- many a times disciplinary experts do not interact to the required or desired level, this is expected,.... Nonetheless, the shift towards the culture of collaboration whether in academia, industry or policy looks promising. With challenges like climate change, ecologically conscious development or sustainable development taking top position in domains that require priority attention , interdisciplinary research is likely to take leap from being rhetoric (as it may be) to being pragmatic
As an example I can share the link of my current project that has evolved from an interdisciplinary perspective to trans-disciplinary (involving acting participation of all stakeholders)-http://www.biodiva.uni-hannover.de/
Dear @Debi, as @Florian has mentioned, here is an example of EU project:
The Neurorobotics Platform
"The Neurorobotics Platform will exploit the 3D modelling capabilities provided by commercial and open source gaming platforms (the choice of platform will be made in the early stage of the project). The HBP Neurorobotics Platform will allow researchers to conduct closed-loop experiments, in which a virtual robot is connected to a brain model, running on the HPC platform or on neuromorphic hardware. Although the capabilities to model virtual robots and environments already exist, and although various labs have created closed-loop set-ups with simple brain models, the HBP platform will be the first to couple robots to detailed models of the brain. This will make it possible to perform experiments exploring the link between low level brain circuitry and high-level function. The first release of the Neurorobotics Platform will offer extremely simple functionality. The majority of technical development work will focus on the goals fixed for the second release, which will provide a flexible environment in which researchers can perform experiments using simulated robots connected to different classes of brain model (simplified versions of the models provided by the Brain Simulation Platform; high level models coming from the Cognitive Architectures and Theory subprojects)."
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/neurorobotics-platform1
some examples of Inter-disciplinary research:
Development of bio-diesel as alternate transportation fuel is an area of agriculture science, biochemistry, chemical, mechanical, and automobile ,environmental engineering.
Development of sustainable metal cutting fluid is an inter disciplanary research area of medical sciences, agriculture,and multi discipline engineeing.
Development of high efficiency Solar energy power plants is an area of solar thermodynamics, physics, electrical energy, and mechanical engg.
there are plenty of examples where large numbers of multi fields are involved in research.
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