Building bridges and unlocking synergies

Interdisciplinarity has been a ubiquitous buzzword in science for many years now. Politicians and academics alike are unanimous that research disciplines need to work together more closely, not least because the pressing issues of our age – from digitalisation and antibiotic resistance to migration – are extremely complex and affect a wide range of academic fields

For all the discussion about new processes and structures, it is ultimately the researchers working on real-life projects who create added value from interdisciplinarity. This is precisely the approach adopted by the SNSF’s Sinergia funding programme. It finances collaboration between two to four research groups from various disciplines and institutions if there is a likelihood of it generating groundbreaking results. “It’s very much a tangible way of driving forward the integration of different scientific fields,” explains Dirk van der Marel of the SNSF’s Research Council, who is Vice President of the Specialised Committee on Interdisciplinary Research. “It uses two of the strengths of Swiss research – a firmly embedded bottom-up culture and the willingness to collaborate.” 

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In practice, however, projects of this kind are a major challenge for researchers. According to Gunter Stephan, an economist at the University of Bern, just explaining and understanding each participating group’s approaches and terminology at the outset of the project is a challenge in itself. He worked on a Sinergia project with hydrologists, meteorologists and political scientists from various universities, investigating how Switzerland can prepare for future extreme weather incidents. In the course of their investigations, the researchers considered the uncertainty of forecasts, the wide range of potential adaptation strategies and the political feasibility of measures. “When economists talk about efficiency, they mean something different than environmental scientists,” says Gunter Stephan, “so the first thing we had to do was develop a shared vocabulary.”

Just as important during the project design phase was establishing what the researchers could achieve together, and what they could not. During this process, Gunter Stephan was surprised by his fellow project managers’ genuine willingness to find and use synergies. “Everyone literally insisted on achieving more together than every discipline could on its own.”

Mathew Magimai-Doss, a computer scientist at the Idiap Research Institute in Martigny, had the same experience. Working with researchers from the University of Applied Sciences in Special Needs Education in Zurich and the University of Surrey in the UK, he is developing a system that automatically recognises and understands Swiss German sign language. It will also provide a template for other sign languages. “We systematically worked towards an integrated project right from the initial planning phase,” says Mathew Magimai-Doss. “That’s essential to prevent the entire project subsequently disintegrating into separate workstreams that each institution carries out largely in isolation.”

It does not go without saying that scientists will be willing to venture into the unfamiliar waters of an interdisciplinary project. “Autonomy is generally very much encouraged in research,” says Jardena Puder, an endocrinologist at Lausanne University Hospital. “However, it’s not always conducive to collaboration.” This is why she felt that good communication with potential project participants in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect was crucial. And she wanted to be able to count on her fellow researchers remaining committed to their shared goal not only during project submission, but throughout the entire research phase.

Working with psychologists, movement scientists and paediatricians at four university hospitals, Jardena Puder investigated the effects of stress and lack of exercise on children’s health – specifically their cognitive functions, psychological well-being, weight and motor skills. “A project of that kind won’t ’fly’ unless the people working on it get on with each other,” she says.

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Both Gunter Stephan and Mathew MagimaiDoss second that statement unreservedly. However, personal interaction requires effort, especially if the researchers work at locations that are far apart and have never met, as is the case with the project that Mathew Magimai-Doss is working on. “E-mail, phone and Skype are obviously our primary methods of communication,” he says, “but when there are important decisions to be made, you have to meet in person and discuss them face-to-face.” In Gunter Stephan’s view, good personal relations are essential not least as a basis for dealing constructively with criticism or even offering it in the first place. He says this is essential in science.

However, Sinergia projects do not just involve the heads of the research groups at each institution, they also involve doctoral students, undergraduates and other specialist staff members. “Maintaining good interdisciplinary collaboration across all these levels demands a lot of time and determination,” says Jardena Puder. She says that practical or conceptual challenges often arise unexpectedly, and then it becomes clear how firmly embedded everyone is in their particular discipline.

“It is clear to us that interdisciplinarity can be a challenging undertaking in real life,” says Dirk van der Marel, “and we’re deliberately encouraging it in the Sinergia projects for precisely that reason.” Both the researchers themselves and their findings confirm that it’s worth it. Interdisciplinary projects come up with answers to the complex issues of the world we live in.

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