Life at the interface

'Interdisciplinary' is a buzzword that, rather like 'nanotechnology', has been sadly abused. It can hide a multitude of scientific sins and be used to justify everything from closing down departments to letting the market decide what jobs scientists are fit for. But when interdisciplinary science is done well – enabling those from different disciplines to learn from each other, solve each other's problems and come up with brand new ideas – it can be truly inspiring. Recently I've become fascinated with the places where the physical sciences, life sciences and medical sciences meet. Oxford's LSI DTC is just such a place. I interviewed four of its students for an article last year and they had lots of interesting things to say. I hope to blog more on this soon, for now click through to the full article...

Where sciences collide

How doctoral training can build new connections between the physical and life sciences 

In 2001 Oxford University already had many scientists working at the border between the mathematical, physical and engineering sciences and the life sciences. It hosted world-leading research groups working in such interdisciplinary areas as bio-nanotechnology, medical imaging and image analysis, computational biology and bioinformatics. Yet Professor David Gavaghan and research group leaders such as Professor Peter Donnelly, Professor Mike Brady and Professor John Ryan knew that for science along this borderland to flourish they needed to rethink the training they were offering to their graduate students.

Making the jump from undergraduate studies to studying for a PhD can be a difficult experience for many graduate students. ‘We were aware that a lot of the time, when people are choosing a PhD, they have very limited information to go on. They might read a paragraph or two about a project and talk to their prospective supervisor but quite often they really don’t know what they are letting themselves in for,’ said Professor Gavaghan. While in areas where graduate students can produce high quality work without needing to step outside a single discipline this was not such a major problem, for interdisciplinary research it was a major stumbling block. For graduate students to work effectively in an interdisciplinary environment they have to be able to explain their research to non-specialists, to quickly pick up new techniques from elsewhere that they could use in their work and see familiar problems from someone else’s point of view. Rather than immediately specialising in a particular area what these students needed was a more varied training programme that exposed them to the ideas, techniques and terminology of a wide range of disciplines from the mathematical, physical and life sciences to the clinical sciences.

Interdisciplinary research groups at Oxford already had strong links with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and their Life Sciences Interface Programme. So when Lesley Thompson, then Programme Manager of EPSRC’s LSI Programme, asked for expressions of interest in setting up Doctoral Training Centres – a new approach to teaching across the disciplines that would help students learn ‘transferable’ skills such as computing and communication skills – Oxford researchers spotted a golden opportunity. When, in 2002, their bid for a Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) was successful, Oxford’s EPSRC Life Sciences Interface DTC was born. As they were putting together a programme for the new DTC the researchers asked themselves a simple question as Professor David Gavaghan, director of the Centre since its formation, recalls: ‘We asked ‘what training would we have liked to have?’ and started from there.’

Chris Yau joined the LSI DTC in 2004 and is in his final year. He started out focusing on medical imaging but decided that he wanted to move into bioinformatics and now works on disease genetics and cancer genetics. ‘It’s part of what makes the programme special, that someone with an engineering background like me can change and do statistical genetics, there’s a willingness to let students change and follow new research interests,’ said Yau. He has been pleasantly surprised at how open biologists and clinicians have been in explaining their work and talking to him about problems his expertise might help to solve. ‘Often researchers set up experiments to test particular hypotheses and then just pick out the obviously relevant data. In my work I follow up and delve deeper, using mathematical techniques to tease out the less obvious features,’ he added. Along with many of the graduates at the DTC he particularly appreciates the structured first year of the programme that supports students as they learn about a variety of research areas and techniques and then gives them the freedom to choose their own path for the rest of the three years.

Richard Mann graduated with a physics degree but wanted to change tack for his PhD studies. ‘I joined the LSI DTC because I was interested in genetic algorithms and the work of the Human Genome Project but after listening to one of the older students give a talk about avian behavioural studies I decided to follow up his project,’ said Mann. Currently in his third year, Mann is now working with zoologists looking at very large datasets from field studies. ‘Right now I’m analysing GPS data from studies of pigeons and data showing when petrels are on the surface and when they’re underwater. For the zoologists it’s like they’re getting something for nothing as we can often get very interesting results out of data they’ve gathered just as a control for a particular study – sometimes they think we’re magicians!’ he said. One theme running through the DTC training is that students not only have to learn about new areas but have to be able to report back and explain what they have learnt: ‘It ensures that people can talk about what they do and it also means that you have to be up to speed very quickly on a new topic and be able to start making a contribution right away,’ commented Mann.

The Centre doesn’t just offer a path for graduates from the physical sciences who are interested in working with life scientists and clinicians, graduates can go in the opposite direction too: Daniele Selmi is a biochemistry graduate who was always really interested in physics. Rather than wasting what he had learnt at degree level and doing something totally different he chose to work in bio-nanotechnology on electron crystallography of proteins. ‘It’s an area that’s still very biology-focused,’ he said, ‘but it means I get to work across physics, biochemistry and materials science. The Centre has a culture of continual learning and it has enabled me to develop totally new skills. For example, I didn’t know anything about programming when I started and now I’m doing programming for image analysis to do with my project and I’m really enjoying it.’ Selmi is passionate about his science and may, like the majority of those at the DTC, aim to build a career in research. However, he also sees it as the ideal PhD if he decides to follow his other passion, intellectual property law. ‘If I don’t go into research I’d like to specialise as a barrister dealing with technical IP issues. You really have to think about how the science was done and I feel if scientists don’t go into this area of law then those making research discoveries will lose out.’

Medicine was an area that always fascinated engineering graduate Miklos Gyongy but he wanted to apply the knowledge he already had to medical problems rather than start training from scratch. ‘My research is on High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) which has potential applications in destroying tumours, stopping bleeding and body sculpting,’ he said. ‘It’s the only truly non-invasive form of surgery and has many advantages over conventional techniques, in particular because it carries almost no risk of spreading cancer cells through the body. At the moment I’m working on the monitoring of ultrasound cavitation – microbubble activity – caused by HIFU, which greatly speeds up treatment but is an unstable phenomenon.’ At the end of his four years at the DTC Gyongy intends to return to Hungary to continue his research. He said: ‘I think the traditions of Oxford, especially the college system where you mix with people doing all kinds of subjects, make it a particularly good environment for interdisciplinary research and have helped to make the LSI DTC a success.’

Moore’s Law, the ‘rule’ that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every two years, has had many unexpected consequences. It has already given us mobile computers and smart devices but, as the research currently underway at the LSI DTC is showing, the greatest benefits could still be to come: in giving us the computing power to model human biology at an unprecedented level. ‘Using medical imaging and other non-invasive techniques it is now becoming possible to quantify biological systems, such as the heart, and build mathematical and computational models that accurately reflect what is going on inside our bodies’ said Professor David Gavaghan. ‘The revolution, as we begin to blur the boundaries between the physical and life sciences, has only just begun.’

Main image: Graduate students from the EPSRC LSI DTC: [Left to right] Christopher Yau, Miklos Gyongy, Richard Mann and Daniele Selmi.

This article was previous published in the November 2007 edition of Blueprint magazine.

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