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“People Were Dreaming of Cinema Long Ago,” Says Pavle Levi, an Assistant Professor

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“People Were Dreaming of Cinema Long Ago,” Says Pavle Levi, an Assistant Professor INDEPENDENT GRANTS THAT NEW RULES ABOUT FEMINIST STUDIES LABORATORIES MAKE IT REAL ACTING YOUR AGE ALIVE AND WELL The network of 13 Federal agencies A psychologist A quarter-century labs embraces an are encouraging hopes a new after the program array of researchers multidisciplinary multidisciplinary was founded, it from just about research and center on longevity speaks to a new every discipline. training. will change attitudes generation. page 6 page 2 about aging. page 12 page 6 inter action ISSUE 2 • WINTER 2006 • STANFORD UNIVERSITY • MULTIDISCIPLINARY NEWS UPDATED AT http://multi.stanford.edu PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA COBB A vision realized “People were dreaming of cinema long ago,” says Pavle Levi, an assistant professor in Stanford’s Art and Art History Department and its new Film and Media Studies Program. The camera obscura, a device for creating images that later would give its name to a film studies journal, appeared in ancient China and then in Greece. Much later, in early modern Europe, optics became a source of entertainment; a “magic lantern” presented in 1659 was perhaps cinema’s first ancestor. see FILM STUDIES, page 4 inter action MULTIDICIPLINARY NEWS UPDATED AT http://multi.stanford.edu The grants that make the research possible ver since Frederick B. Terman, education, who now works at the Social Science principal investigator for a single molecule spec- dean of the School of Engineer- Research Council (http://hybridvigor.net/publica- troscopy group funded by the NIH within its ing, came up with his notion tions.pl?s=interdis). molecular libraries and imaging section. (http:// of steeples of excellence in the In similar fashion, the Roadmap initiative of the www/stanford.edu/group/sm_cell_imaging/) 1950s, research grants have fu- National Institutes of Health (NIH) outlines the Along with colleagues at Kent State University, eled Stanford by drawing money crucial importance of changing the nature of the the researchers at Stanford use lasers to observe and ensuring that the university grant-giving business by removing traditional bar- single molecules and the proteins within them. remains the home of some of the riers (http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/researchteams/ Moerner, biologist Lucy Shapiro and physicist world’s greatest scientists. index.asp). The NIH provides more Harley McAdams had all been working on a re- EGrants are still a prime source of en- money than any other single source for lated project funded by the Defense Advanced Re- ergy for many Stanford schools and de- university research nationwide. search Projects Agency. partments, and they are still on the rise. “Although research teams have in- “When that project ended,” Moerner said, “I Sponsored research in fiscal year 2005 cluded individuals from multiple disci- had heard about the new NIH Roadmap program accounted for 37 percent of the universi- plines,” the website states, “integrating asking for bold ideas. And since we had already ty’s operating revenue, or $973 million, different disciplines holds the promise demonstrated single-molecule imaging in bacteria, up 5 percent from the previous year. of opening up currently unimagined the goal was to do it better in cells with brighter What’s different about grants today scientific avenues of inquiry and, in the objects to make them more easily detectable.” and grants in Terman’s day, aside from process, may form new disciplines with The group needed new and better molecules. the raw numbers, is that today’s are Jeff Koseff which to tackle increasingly complex Enter Robert Twieg of Kent State University increasingly complicated and multifac- questions.” (http://dept.kent.edu/chemistry), who eted. As multidisciplinary research becomes the To that end, the NIH, like the NSF, just happened to be developing such rule in all scientific schools and departments, has over the past decade been fund- things. A sort of assembly line ensued, grants can get difficult to administer, on the one ing multiple-year large team projects, though each step of the way involved hand, but also can become more responsive to sometimes called centers, sometimes feedback from the rest. Twieg made scientific needs and inquiry, on the other. The called glue grants. Bringing together the molecules, Moerner measured them match is by no means perfect; researchers and an array of researchers, they often em- in model cells to see if they were good grant makers sometimes seem to be in a race to brace several institutions and include enough, and Shapiro and McAdams stay apace of each other’s agendas. But certainly training (and cross-training) as well as studied their behavior within bacteria. the matchmaking is increas- research funding. A “Before the 1990s, we weren’t able to ingly successful, and the re- new NIH transla- follow molecules except by measuring a Anne Hannigan sults can be seen especially Today, ‘NIH almost looks tional research grant large number of copies at once, which in Stanford’s schools of En- launched in October, for ex- only gives an average,” Moerner explained. “Now gineering and Medicine. like Bio-X!’ Bienenstock ample, explicitly encourages we can look closer and ask, Do all these molecules The NSF has embarked medical schools to provide a march to the same drummer?” upon a variety of initiatives to said, referring to the federal home for disciplinary-based Similarly cross-disciplinary research is going encourage multidisciplinary lab scientists. on at other big universities, of course, but Stan- research and training. Since agency’s new dedication to It was not always that ford has an edge, said Moerner, who with Judith the late 1980s, the agency has way. Stanford’s dean of re- Frydman was a co-recipient of one of the first Bio- funded Science and Technol- cross-disciplinary research. search and graduate policy, X Interdisciplinary Initiatives grants in 2000. ogy Centers, which bring to- Arthur Bienenstock, remem- “There are two aspects that make Stanford spe- gether scientists from a broad bered when his Synchro- cial,” he said. “We have a close physical connec- range of disciplines. In 1995, tron Radiation Laboratory tion between the basic sciences, engineering and the NSF set up an Office of received its very first NSF the medical community. They’re all within a few Multidisciplinary Activities, funding in 1972. But the hundred yards of each other. That is very rare, whose name is self-explanatory. A program spe- agency just wouldn’t commit. and the proximity really facilitates collaboration. cifically designed to help recent Ph.D.s acquire the “It was like they were interested in sex without The second aspect is that graduate students can cross-disciplinary training necessary for success- marriage,” Bienenstock said. “They kept insist- cross departmental boundaries, so I have students ful careers, the agency’s Integrative Graduate Ed- ing on three-year renewals. There was no mecha- in my lab from the physical sciences, chemistry, ucation and Research Traineeship (IGERT) since nism—we were driving the loop, we were pushing applied physics, biophysics, etc., and they can all 1998 requires that applicants propose a compre- for a long-term multidisciplinary view, and it was work together.” hensive interdisciplinary theme. clearly awkward for them.” As for the bumps, they are of various sorts. More recently, the NSF funded an 18-month But today, he laughed, “NIH almost looks like Managing complicated multidisciplinary grants report titled “A Multi-Method Analysis of the So- Bio-X!” issued by labyrinthine and bureaucratic agencies cial and Technical Conditions for Interdisciplin- Though there are bumps along the NIH road, is no easy task. It is sometimes a challenge just ary Collaboration.” The report’s principal inves- Stanford researchers are certainly going along for to make researchers aware that they can breach tigator was Diana Rhoten, a Stanford Ph.D. in the ride. Chemist W. E. Moerner, for example, is boundaries and that there is money available to 2 WINTER 2006 MULTIDICIPLINARY NEWS UPDATED AT http://multi.stanford.edu L.A. CICERO Chemist W.E. Moerner is principal investigator for a single molecule spectroscopy research group funded by the National Institutes for Health. do that. Chris Webb, a former genome scientist across the campus. manities and Sciences, engineering is in Engineer- who stepped over into the administrative side of Stanford’s other schools do not have someone ing, radiology is in Medicine and bioengineering research, is in charge of helping professors at the like Webb, and Anne Hannigan, associate vice straddles two schools), to which agency should School of Medicine put together multidisciplinary president for research administration, says she they apply? Who should be the principal investi- grants. He said he saw plenty of colleagues strug- wishes they did. Her department does what it gator, or PI? How should credit be apportioned? gling to do research on their own, unable to figure can, she said, but younger faculty members need How should different departments and schools out how to link up with others. more assistance. reconcile their accounting methods? (See related “They needed a nice cover story,” he said, re- “We don’t serve them well. That’s a goal of article, this page.) ferring to the challenge of showing one researcher mine, to serve them better with research prod- There is also the problem of money. More than that her narrative, as it were, could also be part ucts,” she said. one person interviewed for this story remarked of someone else’s story. Webb’s boss, Senior Asso- All in all, however, “Stanford is in good shape,” gloomily that federal research budgets will remain ciate Dean for Research Harry Greenberg, added she said. But financial administration of grants is flat for at least the short run. The Clinton admin- that “most researchers are already maxed out” a complicated business, with different incentives istration in 1998 embarked upon a five-year plan with their own work, “so Chris is a bridge.” and disincentives across the university, and “the to double the NIH’s budget, a task completed un- The School of Medicine pulls in more research funding structure makes it more difficult for peo- der the first George W.
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