What does HFSP mean by “interdisciplinarity”?
A. For HFSP, interdisciplinarity is the collaboration of biologists with scientists from other disciplines such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, advanced bioinformatics, computer science, nanoscience and engineering. Note that interdisciplinarity is a rapidly evolving concept: a novel combination of disciplines that allowed a significant breakthrough a few years ago will not be scored highly now if the same combination has become routine in the field. Past examples would be structural biology combined with routine functional studies or confocal imaging applied to developmental biology or cell biology. While the skills of nonbiologists were essential to design and implement confocal microscopy and the treatment of images, much of this is now widely available (often commercially). The same is true for ‘routine’ bioinformatics particularly in the fields of neurobiology or immunology where these approaches are now part of the discipline. In these fields it would be expected that the com
