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An indifference to boundaries

Nature volume 451, pages 872–873 (2008)Cite this article

As some of the world's largest universities undergo dramatic departmental restructuring to foster interdisciplinary research, John Whitfield asks whether they're making the right move.

Immunologists at Imperial College London have been tripping over a sticky problem: the structures of the molecules they are working on. The obvious go-to team is the institute's strong corps of structural biologists. But the immunologists are in the division for cellular and molecular biology, whereas the structural biologists are in the division of molecular bioscience. Splitting the funding — and the credit — causes turf wars. The solution? A department of life sciences that merges three biological divisions. “We decided we needed to break the incentive to be selfish,” says ecologist Ian Owens, who heads the new interdisciplinary department.

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Whitfield, J. An indifference to boundaries. Nature 451, 872–873 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/451872a

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