Winter
2002
The New Scientists
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“The
old image of the scientist who labors away for years alone in the
laboratory until he yells ‘Eureka! I’ve found it!’
doesn’t exist anymore,” says Robin Garrell, associate
professor of chemistry and biochemistry. “Discoveries are now
happening in-between fields, in collaboration with others from different
fields and by combining concepts. So it’s important that we
now have scientists who can think beyond the boundaries of their
own training.” For these hybrid scientists, the traditional
barriers that separate, for example, a neuroscientist from an electrical
engineer, or a computer scientist from a molecular biologist, simply
don’t exist.
At
UCLA, this new cadre is nurtured by graduate programs established
with $8 million in funding from the National Science Foundation
to build the future intellectual capital of the United States. These
future scientists are being educated “to have a broader perspective
while maintaining their depth in at least one traditional field
of science or engineering,” says Paul (Wyn) Jennings, program
director for traineeships in the NSF’s Division of Graduate
Education.
Similar
NSF training programs have been set up at 56 U.S. universities,
but UCLA is one of only five schools to receive five-year grants
for three Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship
(IGERT) programs — in neuroengineering, bioinformatics and
materials creation.
The
university has received this high level of funding, Jennings says,
because it has demonstrated that its researchers can work and teach
across traditional disciplinary lines. “Many institutions
have cross-department research, but only a few such as UCLA have
the ability and flexibility to educate across traditional boundaries,”
he says. “That is what makes UCLA great in this program, along
with their excellent scientists and engineers.”
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