University Communications

WITH PROGRAMS TEACHING GRADUATE STUDENTS TO THINK BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL BOUNDARIES THAT SEPARATE DISCIPLINES, UCLA IS NURTURING THE NEXT GENERATION OF SCIENCE EXPLORERS

By Cynthia Lee
Illustration by Melinda Beck

TWENTY YEARS AGO, THERE WAS NO SUCH FIELD AS BIOINFORMATICS. NO NEUROENGINEERING. NO MATERIALS TO CREATE DEVICES SMALLER THAN THE DIAMETER OF A HUMAN HAIR. IF THEY EXISTED AT ALL, IT WAS ONLY IN THE MINDS OF VISIONARY SCIENTISTS.

Today, however, these are among the hottest new fields of inquiry, fertile treasure grounds that are being mined for scientific riches — more effective therapies to fight disease, answers to the mysteries surrounding the circuitry of the human brain, retinal implants for the blind, low-energy sources of light.

The hunt for such new discoveries is not an easy one and requires the work of a wholly new kind of scientist, one who is trained to work and communicate across the boundaries of divergent disciplines.

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