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While it's not exactly the stuff of Neil Simon's plays, physicist André Longtin and neuroscientist Len Maler have become an “odd couple” that have forged productive personal and professional bonds.
The latest and most public evidence of that productivity is the selection of Longtin and Maler as the first recipients of the university's award for interdisciplinary research.
The award recognizes research that the two, along with their graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, have been pursuing for several years on the ways in which weakly electric fish communicate with each other and learn about their environment using electrical fields as a means of sensation.
That work, combining the physics and mathematics of Longtin and the neuroscience of Maler, has led them to a growing understanding of how the fish focus on their own signals in an environment where electrical signals are omnipresent. Their work is revealing novel physical and biological principles of neural function and thus to publications in several prestigious journals, including Nature, Physical Review Letters, and Neuron.
But it's also led them to think about the potential for partnerships to invigorate science and the bright future of interdisciplinary research.
“Interdisciplinary research will increase the pace of change in science and in universities,” says Maler. “There has been stagnation in some areas of science. Working together with new partners can allow new questions to be asked.”
Longtin points to a new Department of “Systems Biology” at Harvard – “the first new department developed there in years,” and adds that computational neuroscience will become as important as molecular biology, and may soon become a standard part of undergraduate curriculum.
Both agree that a major support for their research has been the openness of the university – and their deans – to the principle of research that crosses disciplinary lines, and to their work.
Not surprisingly, they say that technology and the Internet are assuming an increasing role in stimulating collaborations like theirs.
Importantly for Longtin and Maler, the increased accessibility of high-speed computing has allowed researchers to do the math necessary to the field of computational neuroscience.
The two researchers don't expect to see students of the future trying to master two disciplines, but think it's more likely that students will ensure they take foundation courses like physics and calculus early on in their career, move on to advanced undergraduate courses that involve some ‘line-blurring’ like computational neurobiology, and then seek out partners during graduate school or after. Maler's advice: “Take the hard math and physics courses in your first years. They're basic, and it takes a long time to prepare yourself for this kind of work.”
Maler and Longtin agree successful partnerships need to be based on strong personal relationships and on willingness by researchers to delve into the unfamiliar language of a new discipline.
Longtin says: “The challenge of interdisciplinary research has always been to master one set of skills in your primary area, such as biophysical modeling, and be reasonably proficient with another set, such as neuroscience. Finding someone with the complementary set of skills is ideal, but not easy. Len and I were lucky to do so.”
Maler thinks increasing collaboration is inevitable. “It's bred by success,” he says.
Given their award winning work, it's difficult to argue.
