Structural relationships between the Engineering and Physical Sciences and the Health and Life Sciences
19th December 2013
Rebecca Steliaros, PhD, MBA Research in Focus Ltd
1 | P a g e
Executive Summary
This study focused on identifying and then analysing multidisciplinary Health/Life Science (HLS) and Engineering/Physical Science (EPS) collaborative centres or their equivalents within the 32 most research intensive UK universities and comparing those with internationally prominent HLS research institutes. The purpose of this analysis was to identify: strategic interdisciplinary EPS/HLS collaboration, the main success features and any remaining barriers to interdisciplinary working.
A number of coherent messages were derived from the analysis. Namely: 1) the need to focus activity around a key problem or grand challenge, bringing to bear the most relevant skills, regardless of discipline “label”, 2) the importance of organisational culture, 3) access to flexible funding to underpin dynamism, and 4) the importance of technological development as a catalyst for novel discovery.
The data gathering and analysis stage of the study found 153 HLS/EPS multidisciplinary centres, recognised outside of traditional UK HEI departmental structures. These activities had, in many cases, received strategic investment from either: their university, the UK Research Councils or charity funders/equivalents. Although not within the remit of this study; it should also be noted that a substantial volume of HLS/EPS multidisciplinary research activity was on-going as “normal business” within, and between, departments but without being branded as strategic investment.
Individual universities varied substantially in their approach to incarnating such activities, with some preferred a single centre as the focus for all HLS/EPS activity whilst others had a plethora of highly focused, and perhaps more transient centres. In all cases the centres acted as a focus within their institution/geographical partnership and even if they were a “bricks and mortar” centre maintained outreach and networking activities.
By focusing on grand challenges researchers were able to interact more effectively and see how to apply their own skills and knowledge, within a clear and agreed end goal. Having a grand challenge facilitated decision making, allowed clearer focus on the end result, made it easier to match skills to projects and allowed researchers from different disciplines to interact more easily.
The culture of a particular grouping of people or in a place was also viewed as hugely important and relied heavily on the way in which the leader or senior team approached the challenge; actively demonstrating their appreciation of the complementary skills brought by others. Interviewees from the internationally prominent institutes were unanimous that the vast majority of cutting edge biology/health sciences results to have emerged from their labs have only been made possible by preceding advances in physics, chemistry, computing, mathematics, materials or engineering. For example Professor Sir Hugh Pelham, director of MRC’s Laboratory for Molecular Biology said that “in order to conduct efficient DNA sequencing one first required chemists to put in place the key step of being able to synthesise dideoxynucleotides, and thanks to new computing techniques it is now possible to see the side chains of alpha helices by electron microscopy. These techniques and others provide new tools and techniques to biology and act as catalysts, opening up huge swathes of previously inaccessible new biological discoveries”.
The third consistent message to emerge from all interviews was the availability of flexible funding to enable leaders to dynamically refocus or accelerate particular activities. For some this meant being able to change research direction whilst for others it meant being able to flexibly move from fundamental discovery right through to translation and real-world application. In all cases it was the
2 | P a g e
ability to be the master of one’s own destiny and the flexibility of funding to enable that, which made rapid progress with high impact possible.
There was clear division when it came to views of whether one should set up as a bricks and mortar institution, housing all relevant researchers together or whether one should operate a networked model. In all cases each interviewee felt their model worked most effectively i.e. the internationally prominent institutes said that bricks and mortar and differently trained/skilled researchers working together as a research group, formed around a particular challenge was more effective than setting up as discipline based departments. However, the interviewees did report difficulties in hiring those skilled in engineering/physical science disciplines due to perceptions that these skills would simply be used as a service to biological/medical colleagues and that such researchers would not advance their careers in their “home” discipline as quickly. The opposite view was held by centres within universities where interviewees were clear that forming around a grand challenge gave focus but that they needed to remain in a “home” department to enable their subject area expertise to grow, as they were aware of, and contributed to advances in the “core” of their discipline. These interviewees were concerned that co-locating all researchers into a single facility would just create a different type of silo.
Finally, in the small number of interviews with UK HEI based centres, the value of CDT students in: connecting research areas, perceiving solutions utilising knowledge from multiple disciplines and the ability to move a project on quickly, came across extremely strongly. Many academics currently involved in interdisciplinary research have had to learn the skills of conversing and working with those in other disciplines but CDT students are “growing up interdisciplinary” and thus in many cases are the ones who allow the most promising, interdisciplinary avenues to be investigated flexibly, quickly and with new approaches.
3 | P a g e
Contents
Executive Summary...... 2 1.0 Introduction ...... 5 2.0 The changing research landscape ...... 5 2.1 Overview ...... 5 2.2 Structures ...... 7 2.3 Research Topics ...... 10 2.4 Application area drivers ...... 11 2.4 Medical engineering as an inherently interdisciplinary case ...... 12 2.5 Activity outside official multidisciplinary centres ...... 12 3.0 Case studies ...... 12 3.1 European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) (to be agreed) ...... 12 3.2 European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) ...... 15 3.3 Howard Hughes Medical Institute ...... 18 3.4 BROAD Institute ...... 20 3.5 Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) ...... 22 4.0 Main success features ...... 23 4.1 Mission drives behaviour ...... 23 4.2 Structural issues ...... 24 4.3 Centres allow a more strategic approach ...... 25 4.4 Funding flexibility ...... 25 4.5 Technology Development ...... 25 5.0 Remaining barriers to successful cross/inter-disciplinary working ...... 26 6.0 Conclusions ...... 27
4 | P a g e
1.0 Introduction During early 2013 a desk based research exercise was undertaken to explore whether the 32 most research intensive universities within the UK1 had established multidisciplinary activities to promote interaction between the health and life sciences (HLS) and the engineering and physical sciences (EPS) and where this had happened how the activities were structured, what worked well and what barriers still existed. This desk based research was further complemented with a series of interviews with internationally prominent health/life sciences institutes and UK university based collaborative centres2. These interviews resulted in a series of case studies detailing structures, success features and remaining barriers to even closer integration.
2.0 The changing research landscape
2.1 Overview Of the 32 research intensive universities examined, all have a presence across both the health and life sciences and the engineering and physical sciences as indicated by departments (or equivalents) in areas including medicine, biology, The Southampton Institute for Life Sciences provides chemistry, physics, mathematics and an organisational and regional focus for bringing HLS computer science. Naturally, the and EPS together. Its director Professor Peter J.S. relative strength of these Smith, who has spent time with both academia and departments varies vastly across the industry, was attracted to Southampton because of the sample. Between them, these 32 inherent collaborative culture. The institute builds on organisations have 153 HLS/EPS Southampton’s existing international research strengths centres (institutes, networks, etc.) by complementing activity within the established which span traditional discipline faculties to facilitate collaboration between the boundaries. They were established as disciplines. The institute operates via a small core of entities separate from the traditional staff, who facilitate a number of top down and bottom discipline based, departmental up activities. For example, they secure internal and university structure and set up for the external funding, such as that from EPSRC’s bridging the express purpose of delivering gaps initiative and then run internal peer review interdisciplinary research and/or processes to determine which projects receive training. However, simply counting funding. The institute also runs activities to sow the centres is not a good indication of the seeds of bottom up collaboration. For example, wealth of activity within UK HEIs as working across the university they put in place an early wide variation was found in the remit set of top down topics, facilitate workshops, a formal of such entities. For example, the seminar series, “chalk and talk” workshops and monthly University of Southampton’s Institute Friday afternoon ECR poster sessions. Although only in for the Life Sciences “exists to foster its 3rd year the institute has already facilitated cross-campus interdisciplinary additional grant income for the university and is seeing research links related to the life the emergence of bottom up driven research ideas to sciences”, whereas other centres are eventually replace or enhance the initial top-down more narrowly focused, and in these derived topics. cases the university hosts several, more tightly focused, and often smaller centres. In addition, university policy and strategy has an enormous effect on what and how such centres are established. For example, the University of Edinburgh takes a relatively organic approach, in that many activities which occur between members of more than one department use
1 i.e. the Russell Group, 1994 group (as was in early 2013) and the University of Bath but excluding those organisations with a focused remit such as the LSE. 2 The use of the term “centre” applies equally to physical or virtual activities.
5 | P a g e
the title “centre”. Whereas, in other organisations a concerted top-down strategy has put in place organisation wide grand challenges or objectives which have resulted in centres, or equivalents. Examples include Warwick’s Warwick’s Science and Technology for Health Global Global Research Priority: Science Research Priority (GRP) emerged from a university wide and Technology for Health or strategic exercise in 2011. After profiling university expertise UCL’s series of pan organisation against funder priorities and a series of organisation wide networks such as The workshops a dynamic portfolio of GRPs emerged. Science and Computational Life and Medical Technology for Health is supported by a small executive Sciences Network. The average committee of academic leads/ research support services/ number of centres per institution administration and runs a programme of visits to and from is 5, with a range of 0 to 9. Most Warwick, widely advertises funding opportunities, facilitates HEIs had between 2 and 7 collaborative working and manages an active programme of individual centes (a complete list speakers. Information, ideas and activities reach interested of centres may be found in the academics through champions within each relevant Annex). department who also help to advise on suitable activities. Warwick’s Elizabeth Cromwell says that the GRP has been The majority of centres have invaluable as a mechanism to get people together, facilitate some sort of physical presence multidisciplinary grant applications, raise Warwick’s profile although in many cases this can and make it easier to build relationships with key players in often be a small administrative the health sector. “hub” with most members being physically located in traditional departments. Even when all researchers are physically co-located a common element is for centres to operate extensive internal communication activities in order to update, integrate and encourage participation by interested colleagues and raise their visibility within the HEI UCL is renowned for its world leading bio/med research as well as externally. and “big data” is increasingly becoming more and more important to this sector. However, despite “big data” One of the elements under being underpinned by “EPS” expertise and research investigation was how such centres had areas there is a disconnect between high performance formed and evolved with time. Only 60 computing, simulation and those who want to explore of the 153 centres identified stated “big data” in HLS. The UCL Computational Life and their formation date. For those that Medical Sciences Network is addressing these issues in did, formation peaked in 2007 and one of the largest and densest bio/medical research these centres are still active. Only 2 regions of the world. The network acts as a coordinator centres closed, having met their for all those interested in using life/medical data in UCL objectives, during the course of the and the 24 associated NHS trusts. The network hosts study, though of course it is not annual symposia, the director is part of internal decision possible to say how many more centres making in terms of relevant infrastructure, there is a were formed during this period and programme of information dissemination and a closed prior to the study commencing. seminar/meeting series to promote interaction in what For those centres which do not state a is a very large and complex campus. Prof Nick formation date the tone of the text Luscombe, Professor of Computational Biology used on the respective websites infer (UCL)/Senior Group Leader (Cancer Research UK), says that these centres were typically that “CLMS provides a fantastic forum within UCL and formed within the last few years. across London for computational life scientists to interact and exchange ideas.”
6 | P a g e
9
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Number of Centres NumberformedCentres of 1 0
Figure 1 Year of formation
2.2 Structures
Details on the make-up of all 153 centres were sought. In some cases the centres explicitly detailed whether all researchers were co-located (a physical centre – “Phys”), whether they were distributed over a small number of physical locations (“Dis Phys”) or whether they were an institution (or in some cases a multi-institution) wide network (“Net”). In other cases it was necessary to make a best guess based on the contact information for the centre and associated staff and description of activities. The presence of CDTs or equivalents was also noted.
Two-thirds of the centres had some form of physical bases, though this ranged from an office containing a part time administrator to multi- 60 level, bespoke buildings. Over 2/3 of the centres 50 CDT operated in a networked style, acting 40 as a hub for activity Research within an HEI or across a 30 small number of HEIs with strategic 20 partnerships. Even 10 when a centre was physically present it 0 tended to maintain a comprehensive internal communications strategy, which typically included seminar series, newsletters, virtual Figure 2 discussions, research Centre Structure open days and similar. All the centres identified had, not only a research excellence remit, but also were clearly providing foci for shared interests across multiple discipline based departments, transcending the traditional discipline boundaries i.e. allowing the
7 | P a g e
best of both worlds – core discipline excellence and simultaneous increased creativity/productivity/excellence in shared interests, focused around common challenges.
Oxford University runs 4 Doctoral Training Centres (3 EPSRC The overwhelming supported, 1 BBSRC) with life sciences themes concurrently, which majority of centres were results in an extended cohort approach for all the students involved, research based. However, efficient and effective teaching of the core topics and a significant within the sample are a impact on academic research and industry. For example, by March number of high profile and 2013, the 124 students who had graduated from the programmes seemingly highly successful had published over 700 papers, of which 25 were published in Centres for Doctoral Nature/PNAS/Science and the remainder in high impact journals and Training (CDTs). The conference proceedings. There have been 11 spinout companies EPSRC (jointly with the founded by students, including LabMinds, which secured $3m in BBSRC in a number of start-up funding and won the best technology start up in the UK in cases) currently supports 2012. Another start-up, Colwiz, now employs 40 people. Professor 14 CDTs that are David Gavaghan, credits Oxford’s success as recognising that some specifically constituted to of the most exciting discoveries and most impactful contributions to deliver training at the healthcare are at the interface of HLS with EPS. Students are trained HLS/EPS interface. A in a wide programme of core principals which enable them to further 12 (plus elements become advanced self-learners in a wide range of topics and the of at least an additional 3) centres are integrated with each other and with cutting edge CDTs at the HLS/EPS industrial problems and skills needs. interface were announced as part of the EPSRC’s overall 2013 CDT call (the first students will start in October 2014). Of the original 14 centres only 4 were listed on their university’s website as being a cross-departmental centre. Others must clearly be operating in a similar The University of Leeds is an example of where a wide range of way but are not complementary cross disciplinary research and training activities highlighted to the mutually support each other in a complex web of interconnected outside world as a activity and results in research, innovation and translation outputs strategic university investment. This in no which are stronger than would otherwise be possible. Profs John Fisher, way infers a difference Eileen Ingham, Jennifer Kirkham, and Dr Ceri Williams are clear that it is in the quality of output the total integration of activities which led to such a rich innovative culture and, in turn, motivates a wide range of research from from such centres but fundamental discovery to translation to application and on into the merely an interesting commercial world via spin out companies, licensing, etc. Creation of the note of the way in which next generation of commercial and academic researchers is supported different institutions facilitate administration through EPSRC DCT and CDT programmes, which in addition to of indisputably providing key sources of uniquely qualified researchers to pursue the multidisciplinary varied research programmes also enables new ideas and new research topics to be initiated. Prof Eileen Ingham says that the whole activity is activities. viable because of the significant funding that has been available via
EPSRC DTCs, CDTs, the Innovation and Knowledge Centre in Medical A similar pattern was Technologies and programme grants, funding from the Wellcome Trust, found for EPSRC’s in addition to BBSRC, TSB and others which enables a programme of Innovative Manufacturing Centres, challenge led research that spans fundamental discovery to translation a proportion of which to be conducted. All of those involved in the centre are clear that being based in disciplinary departments allows them to remain in contact with operate at the EPS/HLS their “academic home ” and the advances therein, whilst integrating interface: with the complex network of multidisciplinary activity across the
organisation sparks new research ideas and provides external strategic “challenge led” focus and outlets for their work.
8 | P a g e
The Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre (HaCIRIC) brings together researchers from many disciplines, including economics, engineering, architecture, psychology, management and policy studies. Its research aims to improve the way healthcare infrastructure is planned, designed and delivered, and the impact it has on the health and social care system. HaCIRIC is a collaboration between existing research centres at Imperial College London and the Universities of Loughborough, Reading and Salford.
Multidisciplinary Assessment of Technology Centre for Healthcare (MATCH) aims to transform the medical devices sector through better decision making, so that companies bring better products to market more quickly and less expensively. Match partners include Brunel University (hosting institution), University of Ulster, University of Nottingham and the University of Birmingham.
The University College London Bioprocessing Centre is focusing on new ways of speeding the translation of exciting discoveries in the life sciences to practical outcomes, especially advanced medicines.
The EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Emergent Macromolecular Therapies is creating the capabilities to select drug candidates for clinical trials based on clinical efficacy and feasibility to manufacture the drug. The UK University partners are: University College London, Imperial College London, London School of Pharmacy.
The EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Medical Devices (The University of Leeds in partnership with the Universities of Bradford, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield) is developing advanced methods for functionally stratified design and near patient manufacturing, to enable cost effective matching of device function to the patient needs and surgical environment. The Loughborough Centre for Biological Engineering came about The EPSRC Centre for as a result of EPSRC’s investment in a research chair award to Innovative Manufacturing in Professor David Williams to bring him back Regenerative Medicine from manufacturing engineering in the pharmaceutical industry to (Keele, Loughborough and set up the Healthcare Engineering activity at Nottingham) is translating Loughborough. David and colleagues saw the lack of formal ideas into treatments through departments of biology or medicine at Loughborough as an pinpointing commercially advantage when it came to setting up the centre’s state of the art robust practices and biological manufacturing facility. The lack of existing biological wet processes. lab space meant that the University was able to build from scratch a bespoke manufacturing test-bed facility that focussed on the Of these six IMRCs, only two use of living biological samples as its raw materials. The facility were specially captured as operates as a high quality commercial manufacturing operation part of this project’s work in would; including quality systems recognisable to David’s identifying those centres commercial partners, thus ensuring that lab to factory transfer is which universities themselves expedited. David brings his manufacturing engineering expertise to specify as work closely with biologists and clinicians as partners in both multidisciplinary/cross- the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing and the associated departmental structures. As a CDT. By pairing his production engineering expertise with team follow up to this study, it members and collaborators with the biological or clinical know-how would be interesting to David has been able to create a hub of national excellence that has explore whether there is any now become the home for international thought leaders in the correlation between outputs, area. The Loughborough Centre for Biological Engineering was ease of multidisciplinary popular with SMEs at its launch and has now also become the go-to interaction within a research location for large pharmaceutical companies. organisation, visibility at the
9 | P a g e
highest levels of university leadership and the way in which administration is arranged.
2.3 Research Topics All 153 centres were assigned to a primary and secondary3 research topic where these were clear i.e. for particularly application driven centres where their websites stated how they were addressing the problem and via what research areas.
Figure 3 shows the most popular collaborative areas which the centres identified in this study are addressing.
comp med med infor bio info bio pharma bio proc bio tech bio stat
bio med bio phys Sys and syn bio
regen med plant bio nano bio/med eng/mats
med stat
med phys cell/tissue eng
math bio chem bio
imaging comp bio
Figure 3 HLS/EPS Research topics represented by the multidisciplinary research “centres”1 During the desk research it was also interesting to note that even institutions which did not have a typically varied and strong biological and/or medical department still had activity that spanned the HLS/EPS disciplines and was recognised as such within the institutional structure. This was particularly apparent at Loughborough University. Here the organisation has the typical range of EPS departments e.g. chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science, materials and various engineering departments but HLS activity is primarily contained within the extremely strong and world renowned School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences. Despite not having traditional biology or medical schools Loughborough is still home to the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Regenerative Medicine and the Centre for Biological Engineering. Birkbeck is a similar case. Within the HLS/EPS disciplines it has only departments of Computer Science and Information Systems and Biological Science. To take advantage of its London location Birkbeck researchers partner with UCL researchers in, for example, the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology at UCL/Birkbeck and the Bloomsbury Centre for Bioinformatics.
3 And tertiary/quaternary topics for the two particularly wide ranging centres who stated research topics on their website.
10 | P a g e
The Institute for Medical Science and Technology (IMSaT) is a shared endeavour, building on St Andrews’ and Dundee’s respective strengths in natural sciences and engineering/medical sciences. The creation of the centre has enabled the exchange of ideas and grown a generation of researchers tackling the most exciting problems at the interface of EPS and HLS. Despite being housed in a purpose built structure the multi-disciplinary ethos now pervades, not only the institute itself, but throughout each university’s discipline based departments. This is carried through into strategic planning within each organisation, for example, St Andrews’ new Medical Sciences building has been built directly next to the Physics building and linked by a new bridge. This apparently minor construction decision has served to increase collaboration between the two departments, allowing a synergy of research topics to emerge. Space planning has also played a significant role within IMSaT itself. By locating cell culture labs next to laser labs researchers are able to conduct experiments in much less time and with better quality samples. This has worked well for these relatively small HEIs, though questions remain over whether it would scale to larger organisations. Prof. Kishan Dholakia credits the interdisciplinary culture as commencing with visionary university principals and senior research leaders, in-situ 10 years ago, who recognised that complementary skills could be brought together to tackle, fundamental, cutting edge science in a new way. This approach has continued through subsequent senior leaders. In addition EPSRC was credited as being the earliest and most supportive of the UK Research Councils , allowing momentum to build quickly.
2.4 Application area drivers Those centres which declare an application area (only 27 out of the 153 centres) tended to be those with medical interests:
12
10
8
6
4
2
0 cancer cardiovascular chronic immunology infectious lifelong health neuro disease disease Figure 4 Application areas
11 | P a g e
2.4 Medical engineering as an inherently interdisciplinary case Whilst conducting the research for this study, the author has sought to locate centres of multidisciplinarity, officially sanctioned as cross/multi departmental organisational entities which exist outside the typical discipline based departmental structures traditionally found in UK HEIs. However, some website structures necessitated the examination of individual departmental websites to locate such centres. Naturally in doing so the vast array of activity outside of such official centres became apparent. For example, in the case of medical engineering, it would appear that virtually all of the 32 institutions had such an activity. In some cases it had been recognised as an official multidisciplinary centre whereas in others it existed as a research group, predominately within departments of engineering, and also occasionally within medical departments, depending on the exact nature of the work being undertaken. Whereas for the interdisciplinary centres it was generally possible to assign a “home” discipline to many of the contributing researchers e.g. biology/medicine or engineering/chemistry/maths/ computer science/physics, in medical engineering this was typically not possible. The vast majority of researchers in this area appear to have been trained as medical Manchester’s Biomedical Imaging Institute coordinates engineers or had a long enough careers for them to be considered truly imaging in a biological/medical context across the interdisciplinary within their own university and provides strategic input into assessing and practice. justifying the user base for any significant investments in new imaging equipment. It was set up in 2007 alongside 2.5 Activity outside official an appreciation of the need to facilitate interaction in a multidisciplinary centres number of interdisciplinary areas. As a network (with a Similar but less prevalent examples of physically co-located core staff) rather than a bricks and inherently multidisciplinary research mortar institute its director Prof Geoff Parker feels that areas are mathematical modelling of biological systems, and biological the institute can be more dynamic, responding very chemistry, which also existed in the quickly to emerging research areas . The institute runs a majority of the 32 HEIs examined in series of workshops and seminars, in addition to offering this manner and again varied in studentships and conference support. Since formation whether the activity was contained in a the number of grant applications funded by those centre of its own or within either an associated with the institute has risen and the community EPS or an HLS department. Where it are actively involved with 150 people participating in the was necessary to browse departmental/research group websites last annual showcase. The institute has been increasingly in order to locate HLS/EPS centres it active in public engagement, taking medial/biological was clear that all virtually all such EPS imaging activities into schools and the Manchester departments had some sort of Museum of Science and Technology. These activities interdisciplinary EPS/HLS activity being have been used to communicate the fascinating world of conducted as part of the normal medical imaging and the significant engineering and research interests of that department. fundamental science challenges behind it.
3.0 Case studies This section of the study provides information and interview feedback from some of the world’s most prominent HLS research organisations. It provides detailed information on structure, and opinion based data, on how EPS/HLS interdisciplinarity is promoted within that organisation.
3.1 European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) The EMBL is a molecular biology laboratory which operates from fives European sites: Heidelberg (Germany) – main laboratory
12 | P a g e
Hinxton (UK) – bioinformatics Grenoble (France) – research/services for structural biology Hamburg (Germany) – research/services for structural biology Monterotondo (Italy) – mouse biology
EMBL is funded by 20 member states and one associate member state, organised as an inter- governmental organisation and led by a Director General and a governing Council. The EMBL formally came into being in July 1974 and developed from an idea by the prominent scientists Leo Szilárd (a Hungarian-American physicist and molecular biologist) and the Nobel Prize winners James D. Watson and John C. Kendrew. Their goal was to create a CERN-like supranational research centre to redress the balance in the strongly US-dominated field of molecular biology. The laboratory has been led by the organisation’s fourth Director General, Professor Iain Mattaj, since 2005.
The EMBL's missions are to: perform basic research in molecular biology; train scientists, students and visitors at all levels; offer vital services to scientists in the member states; develop new instruments and methods; actively engage in technology transfer.
By any measure the EMBL is a significant force in global molecular biology research: Research is conducted by approximately 85 independent groups (within 8 units) covering the spectrum of molecular biology. Its 1,700 members of personnel from 70 nations represent scientific disciplines including biology, physics, chemistry and computer science. Income was approximately €180m in 2012, including grants from the EC, BBSRC, MRC and Wellcome Trust. Over 600 peer reviewed papers were published in 2012 Commercial exploitation in the 2012 – 2013 financial year: 34 invention disclosures, 18 patents applied for, 10 patents granted and 2 software inventions were protected by copyright. 44 Students defended their theses in 2012 (in the same year the student body was made up of 212 people from 43 countries). EMBL alumni mainly go on to research careers: academic research (79%), private research (11%) and science careers outside research (3%).
13 | P a g e
3.1.1 Summary of Interview with Dr Silke Schumacher, EMBL’s Director of International Relations: EMBL is very interdisciplinary and specifically sets out to employ scientists from different backgrounds such as physicists, chemists, medically trained researchers, computer scientists, etc. and the research teams are purposefully mixed. The four founding missions were: basic research in molecular biology, advanced training, service provision and the development of relevant instrumentation.
Structure and connection mechanisms The following activities ensure interconnectedness amongst researchers: Group leaders can have joint appointments across research “units”, preferably with units who are geographically distant; this encourages participation in the research activities, retreats, periodic evaluations, etc. of each unit. Since 2008 the EMBL has internally funded a scheme for interdisciplinary postdocs. Each is affiliated to two or three groups and works on an interdisciplinary project. Funding comes from internal resources and (for the 2nd time) the EU’s Marie Curie programme. The programme aids internal collaboration and recruits people with very different research backgrounds, especially those who would not normally have thought of working at EMBL. In 2006 “EMBL centres” were established as virtual meeting places for scientists who share common interdisciplinary interests, not represented within existing units. The centres change as EMBL’s needs evolve. Phase 2 (2012 – 2016) is currently under way. Each centre serves as a focal point, protecting and nurturing an activity through: internal meetings, web interfaces, information exchanges, access to knowhow, and sharing platforms. Research retreats for all faculty members, PhD retreats, postdoc retreats and thematic retreats such as chemical biology are organised. During these retreats ideas and breakthroughs from the various groups and geographic locations are shared and greater integration is achieved to encourage future collaboration/idea generation between people who might not usually meet. The senior scientist committee also promotes interdisciplinarity and geographic connectivity, meeting 5 times per year, rotating throughout the sites.
Issues and Barriers EMBL sets out to employ scientists from different backgrounds although it can be a challenge to attract non biologists. Although specific career advertising is targeted towards physicists, chemists, engineers, etc. experience shows that it can be difficult for researchers in these disciplines to perceive career opportunities. Dr Schumacher was clear that those who have taken the plunge have done very well, so this is a barrier of perception.
The EMBL has a strong service element, for example in bioinformatics and they believe that this impacts on their ability to flexibly choose their own strategic direction. For example, the organisation has to respond to external technology and data developments and has no control over these but must be able to curate, manage, interconnect, serve, etc. the data. EMBL have a statutory responsibility to provide services for areas that have developed at an incredible speed and resulted in enormous data volumes e.g. DNA sequencing. This can have the resultant impact of driving the organisations efforts into places where it might not have expected to go.
What works well? In the EMBL’s experience physicists, chemists and computer scientists all work well with biologists. Physicists particularly, have made a huge difference in EMBL’s technology development work which has enabled joint breakthrough discoveries. This worked so well because for the physicists the
14 | P a g e
problem was missing and for the biologist the technology was missing; so bringing both sets of ideas, techniques and research together made a huge difference.
Computational biology has revolutionised the way in which biology is conducted, which has meant an increased focus on computer science methods and researchers. “Computational biology has become ubiquitous throughout the organisation, there is now no wet lab within the whole of EMBL which doesn’t use computational biology methods and this needs people who come from a computer science background rather than just biology. The increase in data which has been produced within biology within the last 20 years has been huge and now biology produces data comparable to the large physics experiments.” Technology breakthroughs such as DNA sequencing have led to huge datasets becoming available. Through technology development it is now possible to sequence an entire human genome in less than a day so exciting biology becomes possible if you can store, curate, interlink and then serve this data to the user community. These huge challenges yield great opportunities for the advancement of biology.
Influence of senior staff Interdisciplinarity is intrinsic to EMBL and is regarded as being essential to the organisation working well. The various initiatives described earlier led to a culture of Interdisciplinarity which is also reinforced by recruitment and senior staff members. When recruiting, the EMBL specifically looks for candidates who are able to contribute to the culture of interdisciplinarity and collaboration. Group leaders may remain in post for 5(+4) years and they are encouraged to collaborate and share facilities. The core facilities are used to simultaneously enable more effective technological use and development, whilst promoting interdisciplinarity and collaboration.
Changing EPS/HLS relationship Over the last 20 years there have been various waves of technological advances in instrumentation, computation, etc. which have enabled breakthroughs in molecular biology not thought possible 20 years ago. For example this includes analysis of synchrotron data, microscopy and DNA sequencing. It is at the interface between biology and the other disciplines where significant advancements in biology have been generated.
3.2 European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) The EBI is an EMBL outstation based in Hinxton, Cambridge, on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus. The EBI has 500 staff, from 43 nationalities and additionally welcomes a regular stream of visitors. It conducts basic research in bioinformatics and provides services covering the full spectrum of molecular biology. Research makes up about 20% of the institute’s activities, whilst the services allow free access to data from life sciences experiments. Furthermore, there is an extensive training programme helping researchers in both academia and industry to make the most of the huge amount of life sciences data produced daily. The EBI maintains the world’s most comprehensive range of freely available and up-to-date molecular databases and serves data to millions of researchers working across the spectrum of life sciences.
In various stages of development since the late 70s the EBI was officially opened in September 1995. Today the EBI: Has a website which is visited by 11,000 unique IP, or web address per day (IP address can represent either an individual or an entire organisation) Has data storage exceeding 16 petabytes. Addresses the current major bottleneck in life sciences research – that of data analysis (sequencing costs have fallen dramatically, removing that bottleneck), Is challenged by new biological data doubling every 9 months (and accelerating) whilst the storage capacity of computing hardware only doubles every 18 months!
15 | P a g e
3.2.1 Summary of Interview with Professor Dame Janet Thornton, Director, EBI: Structure The EBI, as a research institute, has a very flat structure which is directly correlated to its success as an inherently interdisciplinary organisation. The institute can structure itself around problems to be solved, which for EBI are inherently interdisciplinary. There are 14 members of faculty who conduct research with the remainder of the staff providing services. The original disciplines of those engaged in research are known but the institute’s culture is such that this is never needed or discussed.
The recent data deluge in biology has had a significant impact on the EBI. Since its launch the EBI has: developed a clear understanding of setting up a data resource, gained vast experience of working globally to establish global data resources and delivered technologically advanced services to the wide ranging computational biology community. Furthermore, the huge advances in technology such as the development of the internet, network speeds, data collection, etc, have profoundly affected what biological research could be, and is, conducted. For example, when the EBI was first set up the entirety of its data could be stored on a laptop of today. The EBI now holds 16Pb of data and continues to push the boundaries of connectivity. These technological developments have completely changed how biology works. As a discipline it has moved from a cottage industry model, with individual labs tackling individual problems to a big science model.
The EBI is a single site but part of the larger EMBL organisation. As a single site it has the benefit of having a very clear mandate which gives impetus and a sense of purpose to lead the area, on behalf of Europe. Although the EBI is a single organisation the data it houses comes from a variety of different international projects and thus individuals might have stronger collaborations with researchers in the US, Japan, Australia or Europe than with colleagues in the next lab. Whilst, location at a single site means that the data held by the various databases can more easily be joined together it also introduces challenges in terms of prioritising which data can be curated, managed and looked after effectively.
Clearly being involved in so many global collaborations gives the EBI a unique view. For example, Professor Dame Janet felt that global collaboration introduced an overhead of approximately 30% in the form of extra weekly teleconferences, daily phone calls, emails, etc. and as such distribution of an experiment/service is only effective when there were particular demands such as: security, data magnitude, politics (e.g. cannot exchange data across country borders) or niche expertise driving that decision.
Issues and Barriers The EBI sees no barriers whatsoever to interdisciplinarity. The organisation is clearly driven by its mission and recruits and carries out its activities to reflect this, regardless of the original disciplines of its employees or collaborators. The institute has found that the different thought processes of researchers trained in different disciplines are a strength as different viewpoints aid problem solving.
Professor Dame Janet had witnessed the challenge of interacting between “wet” and “dry” (computational and experimental) research. The organisation is totally “dry” and thus this drives every one of the research faculty members to collaborate with wet lab researchers in order to obtain cutting edge raw data.
Historically, the institute had perceived gaps in the way in which peer review handled multidisciplinary grant applications despite clear processes within Research Councils themselves. These views were still felt to be held by some members of the research community although they were formed many years ago and so unlikely to be an accurate and up to date reflection.
16 | P a g e
The EBI collaborates and delivers services globally so really needs to have global, rather than national grants. Presently they have to apply to several national funding bodies (even for the service functions), which represents significant risk of part of the service not being funded and creates far more administrative effort than would otherwise be required. Furthermore, getting funding for a service that supports anything past initial set up i.e. towards becoming a sustainable service is very difficult, particularly within Europe. Although Dame Janet felt this was improving, there is still much to be done compared with e.g. the US, who she felt, handled such cases much more effectively.
What works well? The EBI is full of people, at all levels, with physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, medicine, computer science, chemical engineering, etc. backgrounds and as all are focused around the mission, members of staff tend not to be aware of colleagues basic training. The organisation is inherently interdisciplinary and has always been so. This includes the research groups as members are employed for their interest and experience relative to the problem being tackled. In a recent institute review the EBI was asked why, if they had leading computer science researchers they did not publish in leading computer science journals. Professor Dame Janet was clear that just because someone is a computer scientist if the problem they have tacked is a biological one then naturally one would expect their results to be published in leading biological journals.
In terms of mechanisms to underpin interdisciplinarity, the EBI participates in the EMBL interdisciplinary fellowships (15 p.a. across EMBL) scheme and runs a similar scheme between itself and the Sanger Institute (2 postdocs p.a.). These 2 postdocs per year each have a supervisor within EBI and within the Sanger and addresses the perceived disconnect between “wet” and “dry” research. There is also a thesis advisory committee, where once per year a different supervisor assesses progress made, allowing additional perspectives. In addition the EBI has research retreats and a strong communications strategy.
Professor Dame Janet felt that complementarity e.g. data generators with data interrogators was the key to fruitful interdisciplinary work. She felt that, particularly over the last 5 years the way in which collaboration was enacted had changed significantly for the better. Now computational researchers are involved from the outset of a project to ensure experiments and computational elements are mutually supportive and fully integrated.
Recruitment is also important to EBI. People who want to work collaboratively are recruited who are both driven by the biological question and have the expertise in their particular area of the problem, typically just an element of the total solution. Over the last 20 years it has got much easier to recruit the correct type of people from a pool of highly talented individuals. There are now many more high quality applications as computational biology has become a well-respected scientific endeavour and is full of people with different training e.g. statistics, computer science, chemistry, physics, etc.
EBI’s experience suggests that one of the mechanisms of communication between different disciplines is often through the data systems e.g. simulation, expert systems, etc. This can effectively be demonstrated by the Biomed Bridges project where three types of bridges are being constructed - people (community to community), words (different ontologies are used to describe the same thing in different disciplines) and data bridges that bring interoperability and data between disciplines. The EBIs data is often used between the disciplines and developing the software tools that enable those bridges are highly important.
17 | P a g e
Influence of senior staff The senior staff live the ingrained culture of interdisciplinarity and are themselves examples of researchers with widely varying backgrounds who now address challenges using computational biology. This culture pervades the organisation.
The changing EPS/HLS relationship In the first few years of EBI it was necessary to focus on the technology. However, as the organisation has evolved and curation/query matured the EBI has been able to focus on enabling key biological questions to be solved. Increasingly there is a focus on the application of sequencing in medicine and agriculture as important areas. The data held by EBI and its expertise in handling has immediate application in hospitals, for example in pandemics, infectious disease epidemics and developing new drug targets. The 100,000 genome project completely changed the technological ecosystem required to support such advances. For example, in the Elixir project the increasing use of personal genomes will mean than each nation will host its own repository of genomes but EBI’s expertise will help to advise such developments across Europe and beyond. Professor Dame Janet believes very strongly that the way in which to move research forward is not to do it in separate departments but to do it in interdisciplinary groupings around grand challenges. She is concerned that if biological problems are driving research projects then biologists need to be involved from the outset to ensure synergy and advancement in both biology and the discipline with the potential solution.
3.3 Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is a not for profit medical research organisation based on one of the United States (US)’s largest philanthropies with an endowment of $16.9 billion (FY2013), of which the Institute spent $727 million for research and distributed $80 million in grants for science education in the 2013 financial year. HHMI is globally significant in advancing biomedical research and science education in the US. The institute was founded in 1953 by aviator and industrialist Howard R. Hughes and is currently based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It employs more than 3,000 individuals across the U.S. The HHMI has a number of activities which it uses to deliver its mission:
HHMI Investigators: Approximately 313 HHMI investigators at nearly 70 U.S. research organisations with nearly 700 postdocs and more than 1,000 graduate students each year are given freedom and flexibility and are expected to work creatively and innovatively at the frontiers of their chosen field. Collaborative Innovation Awards: Launched in 2008, this four-year pilot program enables selected HHMI investigators to join with scientists outside HHMI to undertake projects that are new and so large in scope that they require a team covering a range of fields. Now in its second round of awards, there are currently six projects, supporting research by 28 scientists from 20 institutions in the U.S, Germany and Israel. Early Career Scientists: In 2009, HHMI identified 50 of the nation’s most promising scientists who were given a 6 year appointment with freedom to pursue their boldest research ideas without having to worry about obtaining grants to fund those experiments. International Early Career Scientist Program: This program selected 28 early career scientists and awarded them $650,000 over 5 years with the goal of helping them establish independent research programs. Grants for Science Education funds undergraduate and graduate education initiatives that engage students in discovery research. HHMI-GBMF Investigators supports some of the US's most innovative plant scientists. International TB/HIV Initiative: In 2009, HHMI partnered with the University of KwaZulu- Natal in Durban, South Africa, to establish an international research centre—the KwaZulu-
18 | P a g e
Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH). K-RITH's focus is to make scientific contributions to the worldwide effort to control the devastating co-epidemic of tuberculosis and HIV and to train a new cadre of scientists in Africa. The Janelia Farm Research Campus opened in 2006 in Ashburn, Virginia further extending HHMI’s commitment to research. The initial focus of Janelia is on 1) identification of general principles that govern how information is processed by neuronal circuits, and 2) development of imaging technologies and computational methods for image analysis.
3.3.1 Janelia Farm Research Campus (incorporating comments from an interview with Gerald M. Rubin, PhD, Janelia, Executive Director / 2003–Present) The HHMI promotes Janelia Farm as a pioneering multidisciplinary research centre where scientists gather to tackle “some of science’s most challenging problems”. The complex opened in 2006 and is currently home to 48 lab heads and their respective groups.
Researchers self-assemble into multidisciplinary teams to solve challenging biological problems that are difficult to address in existing research settings. This culture enhances academic freedom by allowing scientists to pursue long-term projects of high significance—projects that could not fit within the confines of a standard grant proposal.
Janelia farm is also a sociological/architectural experiment designed to flexibly stimulate multidisciplinary, team-driven, biomedical research. The shared sense of purpose at Janelia Farm comes from a core belief that people of diverse disciplines and backgrounds can accomplish great things when working toward common goals. Janelia researchers feel free of the barriers typically encountered at a university or industrial research setting.
The campus exemplifies HHMI’s approach to biomedical research, which can be summarized in three words: people, not projects. The Institute provides long-term, flexible funding that enables its researchers to pursue their scientific interests wherever they lead. HHMI believes that scientists of exceptional talent and imagination will make fundamental discoveries of lasting scientific value and benefit to humanity if they are given the resources, time, and freedom to pursue challenging questions.
The Institute nurtures the creativity and intellectual daring of scientists who are willing to set aside conventional wisdom or the “easy” question for a fundamental problem that may take many years to solve. Among the characteristics that distinguish this group of scientists are qualities such as creativity, a penchant for risk-taking, and a commitment to discovery, productivity, and perseverance. Janelia is also committed to sharing new knowledge and tools with the wider research community.
Structure Janelia farm was set up, in part, as an experiment into how to most effectively conduct interdisciplinary research, including how architecture influences interaction. From inception it was designed to have a very flat structure (45 group heads, 2 – 8 members per group – all group heads report to the lab director) and operates more like a start-up company than a university department. The institute has clear scientific goals and recruits people to fulfil those goals. At inception a series of planning workshops (35 people from all over the world) discussed and determined the most important initial goals. From the outset Janelia has always set out, not to work on issues already being adequately addressed by US government funders, but to work on very long-term problems which may change the way treatment occurs in 30 – 50 years. The research groups are relatively small compared to university groups, group leaders work in the lab alongside their teams and do not have to worry about teaching, grant writing or administration, only on research.
19 | P a g e
Issues and Barriers Prof Rubin had no particular experience of certain disciplines being better or worse at collaborating, in his experience it depends wholly on the individual. The only slight advantage he had seen, in terms of working collaboratively, was a perception that those who are used to working that way e.g. in industry were generally more adept on arrival at Janelia.
What works well? People are employed at Janelia for their creativity and innovation with the correct skills to solve the problem that the lab has enunciated. Unlike US universities average Janelia recruits tend to be less experienced – for example 20% of people are hired straight out of PhD. The lab is also highly appreciative of having block funding, which means that individual scientists don’t have to worry about attracting grant funding and the lab as a whole can move very flexibly and quickley.
The lab has a series of workshops/seminars as well as self-assembling meetings to share ideas. These serve to spark new ideas and to enable sharing of advances between the different groups.
The changing EPS/HLS relationship In the last 6 years since Janelia Farm was opened 3 new optical microscopes have been invented, despite funding for this sort of technology development being extremely limited in the US system. Prof Rubin felt that US universities were not good at undertaking technology development, nor getting funding for it despite the significant impact that new technology development can have on research. New technologies/techniques act as catalysts enabling far greater discovery but themselves are not recognised as having such high impact, nor resultantly well-funded.
3.4 BROAD Institute The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a biomedical research institute founded on two core beliefs: 1. This generation has a historic opportunity and responsibility to transform medicine by using systematic approaches in the biological sciences to dramatically accelerate the understanding and treatment of disease. 2. To fulfil this mission, we need new kinds of research institutions, with a deeply collaborative spirit across disciplines and organizations, and having the capacity to tackle ambitious challenges.
The Broad Institute is essentially an “experiment” in a new way of doing science, empowering this generation of researchers to: Act nimbly. Encouraging creativity often means moving quickly, and taking risks on new approaches and structures that often defy conventional wisdom. Work boldly. Meeting the biomedical challenges of this generation requires the capacity to mount projects at any scale — from a single individual to teams of hundreds of scientists. Share openly. Seizing scientific opportunities requires creating methods, tools and massive data sets — and making them available to the entire scientific community to rapidly accelerate biomedical advancement. Reach globally. Biomedicine should address the medical challenges of the entire world, not just advanced economies, and include scientists in developing countries as equal partners whose knowledge and experience are critical to driving progress.
The BROAD Institute evolved from a decade of informal and successful research collaborations among scientists in the MIT and Harvard communities, was founded in 2003 and funded by the philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad. The BROAD institute involves Harvard University and its
20 | P a g e
affiliated hospitals, and MIT. After an initial funding period of 10 years designed to prove the concept Eli and Edythe Broad pledged an endowment to make the BROAD a fully realised, not for profit, research organisation.
The Broad Institute is committed to meeting the most critical challenges in biology and medicine. Broad scientists pursue a wide variety of projects that cut across scientific disciplines and institutions. Collectively, these projects aim to: Assemble a complete picture of the molecular components of life. Define the biological circuits that underlie cellular responses. Uncover the molecular basis of major inherited diseases. Unearth all the mutations that underlie different cancer types. Discover the molecular basis of major infectious diseases. Transform the process of therapeutic discovery and development.
The BROAD institute brings together a diverse group of individuals from across its partner institutions — undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, professional scientists, administrative professionals, and academic faculty. It has 9 groups; each led by a core member with a laboratory consisting of students, postdoctoral fellows and scientific staff. These laboratories are similar in structure and membership to laboratories at academic institutions. However, rather than being embedded in a single department, core member laboratories are physically adjacent to scientists from other disciplines and work collaboratively with researchers, both within and outside of the institute, across a range of critical projects. In addition there are 171 associate members who cover a wide range of disciplines from throughout the partner institutions. The BROAD faculty includes both core members and associate members. All associate members hold primary appointments in a "home department" at one of the partner institutions, but are deeply involved in the scientific work and culture of the BROAD Institute.
The culture and environment at the BROAD is designed to encourage creativity and to engage all participants, regardless of role or seniority, in the mission of the Institute. Within this setting, researchers are empowered — both intellectually and technically — to confront even the most difficult biomedical challenges. The Institute’s organization is unique among biomedical research institutions. It encompasses three types of organizational units: core member laboratories, programs and platforms. Scientists within these units work closely together — and with other collaborators around the world — to tackle critical problems in human biology and disease.
The institute runs a series of “programs” and “program Initiatives”, which are intellectual communities designed to unite researchers around a shared scientific focus. They are comprised of core and associate members and their laboratories, as well as BROAD Institute staff. Program scientists meet regularly to share ideas, launch collaborations that extend beyond the capabilities of any individual laboratory or institution, and pursue ambitious projects with the potential to transform their field.
Similarly “platforms” and “platform initiatives” are professional organisations designed to bring together the technological, informatics and management expertise necessary to create unmatched capabilities for the BROAD’s research. They are led by, and comprised of, professional staff scientists with deep scientific expertise, organisational skills, and experience executing projects that are far- reaching in scope and scale. Platform scientists routinely push the frontier of rapidly evolving technologies and pursue projects that could not be undertaken within a single academic laboratory.
21 | P a g e
3.5 Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) The Cambridge (UK) based LMB is mainly funded by the MRC (80 – 85%) and is responsible for many pioneering techniques, such as methods for determining the three-dimensional structures of proteins and other macromolecules, the sequencing of DNA and the development of monoclonal antibodies. Scientists based at the LMB tackle difficult, long-term, research problems whilst being encouraged to exploit their discoveries – through patents, licensing and business start-ups – helping to advance medical research and improve the UK’s economic competitiveness.
3.5.1 Summary of Interview with Professor Sir Hugh Pelham, Director, LMB: Structure Molecular Biology is an inherently interdisciplinary topic as it grew out of a mixture of physics, chemistry and biology and has now been recognised as one of the pillars of modern biological research. Lab members have won 9 Nobel Prizes to date and much of this can be credited to the early establishment of an interdisciplinary approach.
The laboratory has 55 group leaders and of those a reasonable proportion are chemists, chemical engineers, physicists, biophysicists, zoologists, as well as biochemists and crystallographers. Many of the group leaders come from natural science programmes which imbibe multidisciplinary thinking. The groups are arranged into 4 divisions and resourcing decisions – how much to spend on what, who to hire, etc. are taken at division level. Large equipment investments are taken collectively by the lab director and division heads. The lab’s senior leadership see themselves as facilitators and supporters, setting the scene, appreciating interdisciplinarity and encouraging lab members to try new and adventurous things whilst being focused on advancing molecular biology. The culture is such that all staff collectively understand what the lab is trying to achieve and are focused around clear problems whilst the culture encourages the exploration of all sorts of different approaches.
The lab has a long history of strong technical facilities and equipment building which has arisen from the requirement to build new kit in order to push research boundaries. The lab feels that if it wants to be cutting edge it must build new bits of kit itself because no-one else knows what is required or yet how to build it. In the past this has meant building things from scratch but now it builds on a stronger scientific instrument commercial sector by focusing on unique skills within the lab, for example, by revolutionising electron microscopy detectors in collaboration with the Rutherford Appleton and manufacturers. This requires new thinking in physical science areas whilst appreciating that the need to understand biological molecules drives the research.
Interdisciplinary research moves at such a pace that the lab must continually be aware of how to most effectively deliver its remit. For example, until relatively recently there was a central computational biology group but as biological research has got more and more complex and the range of techniques needed to publish a single paper has increased group heads have recruited skilled computational scientists into their groups.
Issues and Barriers Sir Hugh talked about experiences in which people trained in different disciplines think differently. For example, he has found that chemists have always blended in well, whilst some people trained in physics find it difficult to work with the relative lack of precision possible when experimenting with biological material. Those who work for extended periods on-site and can adjust find success. Experience has shown similar issues for some mathematicians. The LMB’s experience has shown that there must be genuine two way communication and interest/value for both parties, but it can be difficult to find the common ground of interest, focused around solving a particular problem. Sir
22 | P a g e
Hugh summed up their experience as being “within one building it’s really easy to do interdisciplinary work but we have struggled to get strong collaborations with departments and it is difficult to build bridges between experts because they have different goals and views of what they are trying to do. It’s easier with chemists, more difficult with physicists and engineers. There is a deep problem around how to find things of mutual interest where both can make a real difference to solving the problem.”
What works well? In the LMB if people are hired and motivated to meet the common goal of understanding the molecular basis of living things then everyone appreciates reaching that goal requires some people who will be pushing the boundaries of electron microscopy, chemistry, how animals develop, and related topics. If all are treated the same and all subscribe to the same common goal whilst appreciating that there are different ways of getting there the lab succeeds.
Influence of senior staff As well as steering the culture, an additional way in which senior staff affect lab personnel’s approach to research is through reward mechanisms. Within the lab staff are judged, funded and promoted on the basis of their science alone – there is no retreat into “well at least I’m doing my lectures well” as people are employed to do research (some do teach but this is optional). This means that they are judged on what they achieve rather than their activity e.g. getting a grant is not in itself a great success but what is actually done with the money and the people that have been hired can be. The core job of lab researchers is to discover things and be judged on their contributions. Sir Hugh feels that this is tough, but focuses the mind on problem solving.
The changing EPS/HLS relationship In the last few years the lab has made a sustained effort to hire chemists to re-ignite this strength which was felt to have depleted over time. The research itself is becoming more and more complex, which results in groups themselves becoming more interdisciplinary around the biological questions they are trying to answer. The rise in computational biology, high-end microscopy and associated techniques have brought these skills into the groups rather than being set up only as central services as this is more effective for the LMB. Since the early days of molecular biology the area has become vastly more competitive and one now requires very many more techniques to be applied to a problem before it becomes publishable. This has meant the integration of very many disciplines and specialities within each research group and is changing the nature of how biological research is conducted.
Sir Hugh reflected that much of recent biology would not have been possible without fundamental engineering/physical sciences discoveries. For example, DNA sequencing required chemistry to put in place key steps. Electron microscopy and crystallography has required development of instruments and programing and synthetic biology requires a lot of chemistry. Most of what is famous from LMB is interdisciplinary and relies heavily on physics/chemistry/maths/computing knowledge and skills. The biggest impact by EPS on the LMB has been provided by new technology and techniques, new ways of doing things, which act as a catalyst enabling whole new areas of biology to be opened up.
4.0 Main success features 4.1 Mission drives behaviour Both the international research institutes and UK university case studies revealed that a clear vision and grand challenge allowed all researchers associated with an activity to see how their work and skills could contribute, whilst allowing a common language and set of activities to develop. Many of the interviewees had to learn the skills of communicating across disciplines and appreciation of
23 | P a g e
different approaches. However, the use of CDTs to train a new generation of researchers in these skills was highlighted as making a real difference to how researchers thought about their subjects and research questions. Professor David Williams (Loughborough) expressed the ease with which CDT trained students can interact with peers outside their discipline specialism by saying that they “had grown up multilingual”.
Professor John Fisher (Leeds) spoke of the need for focus when he talked about having a vision for where you want to go as a researcher and pursuing that to build a unique capability. Prof Fisher felt this was a strength of the UK research base as he had experienced “the follower approach4” elsewhere. He felt this approach was detrimental to the research community being able to undertake the most morally important projects and stifled creativity especially in early career researchers. It also meant that important topics would not be investigated if the “stars” of a particular area did not deem the research question to be worthy of study. Prof Fisher felt this approach to science was less prevalent in the UK than elsewhere in the world and resultantly the UK had made significant and creative advances in important problems prior to them becoming “trendy” elsewhere in the world. His message to those new to academia was that one should seek to establish a unique capability in a morally important area regardless of what the remainder of the academic community feels in en vogue.
4.2 Structural issues In the vast majority of cases the initiatives examined in this work had some sort of physical presence. However, in all cases they also had an active outreach programme to ensure connectivity between the entity and its external environment, be that within an institution, or within the wider research community. This combination allows both the serendipitous interaction of researchers formally associated with the entity i.e. those experiences typically referred to as “water cooler”/”seminar tea break” moments and a presence/interaction/influence within its wider context. So whilst the vast majority of the UK university centres were predominantly networks rather than physical buildings the face to face opportunities still remained as important and being relatively local meant that these interactions could take place easily without excess travel or other time sapping activities. Therefore, participants got real value out of the interactions without huge impact on their other activities. Prof David Williams (Loughborough) summed up the interaction with his partners who are outside his own university but still geographically close as “work[ing] locally but on globally important issues”.
In many cases those involved in these sort of collaborative centres prioritised face to face activities associated with the centre over their myriad of other activities because the time used was managed to be highly productive and associating with their centre colleagues brought greater success than trying to “go it alone”. Frequently management meetings for leadership teams were set 12 months in advance and members did everything possible to attend.
These comments should not however detract from the importance of good quality physical space. Prof David Williams (Loughborough) succinctly summarises their success as being down to: 1) Good physical space, 2) good people and 3) challenging, interesting problem to stretch those researchers. The lack of existing biological wet labs at Loughborough meant that David was able to start from scratch and build a purpose built biological production engineering facility, which together with the strong team has been fundamental to the centre’s success in partnering with industry.
4 The follower approach can best be summarised as when the tacitly acknowledged leader in a field declares a topic/research question as valuable and it is pursued via an almost survival of the fittest approach, to the detriment of other research questions, until such time as another topic is declared important.
24 | P a g e
4.3 Centres allow a more strategic approach The centres, institutes or networks within a particular university give focus for related activity which might be happening all over the organisation. In all cases these are large organisations, spread over multiple buildings, which can often be several miles apart. By giving a focus to activity the centre not only stimulates new ideas, new collaborations and new partnerships but can also become a go- to resource for high level university planning. For example whilst discussing their organisation wide networks with both Professor Peter Coveny (UCL) and Professor Geoff Parker (Manchester), both highlighted how they had been able to give expert advice, assess user bases and therefore ensure that the university as a whole made the best strategic equipment investment choices possible. This enabled more efficient spending and sharing of equipment resources in their respective large and complex organisations.
By linking all of the current activity in a particular university together several interviewees reported increased success rates, rising research income and greater success in these areas and a raised profile of their institution. The increased grant income was felt to come from a more integrated and coherent approach being more appealing to reviewers and likewise the higher profile helped in building relationships with key players outside the organisation, again resulting, both directly and indirectly, in increased income to support the activity.
4.4 Funding flexibility The issue of multiple funding sources presented a significant risk to the internationally prominent centres. Many of the UK HEI centres faced the same risk but to a lesser extent because many received a core of funding (e.g. in the form of academic salaries and facilities) from their HEI but also because they built multiple layers of activity around the focus of the funding i.e. training, fundamental research, translation and early stage commercialisation. Furthermore, they did not have “customers” to serve in the same way in which some of the internationally prominent institutes had. The HEIs planned on the time horizon necessitated by the funding. Although not winning funding had a clearly negative effect on plans it was nowhere near as risky as for the internationally prominent institutes.
Both Prof Geoff Parker (Manchester) and Prof John Fisher (Leeds) expressed the view that it was increasingly important to be adaptable and flexible as the nature of interdisciplinary research means that one doesn’t know where the next opportunity for discovery will lie. Prof David Gavaghan (Oxford) viewed the CDT approach pioneered by EPSRC (similar schemes are being used by other Research Councils, including BBSRC, NERC and ESRC) as aiding flexibility as they find CDT students spark new ideas and initiate new research avenues enabling researchers to more flexibly respond to emerging opportunities prior to applying for greater standalone resource, outside of the CDT activity to build on those early results.
4.5 Technology Development A theme which emerged only from discussion with the internally leading HLS institutes (but repeatedly) was that of technology development. For these organisations new technology/instrumentation acts as a catalyst allowing them to make new and fundamental discoveries in biology, opening up exploration that was not previously possible. Developing new technologies/instrumentation was particularly important in the early days of the institutes and as the commercial scientific instrumentation sector has established itself researchers there are able to take on more and more novel development, often working in collaboration with the researchers within the institute itself. For the institutes much interdisciplinary work has occurred with the aim of building a new device/technique/instrument that will allow contributions to the institute’s scientific remit. The important point here is the catalytic nature of technology development i.e. that a small,
25 | P a g e
focused investment of time and resource can create an instrument, etc. which can revolutionise what is possible in biological research but that without that instrument, etc. those biological questions remain, at best, answered extremely slowly or at worst, unanswered.
5.0 Remaining barriers to successful cross/inter-disciplinary working For the globally prominent research institutes examined, whilst their clear purpose and mission on solving biological/medicinal grand challenges gave them focus it also made it difficult for those trained in other disciplines to see how they could achieve prominence in their “home” discipline. Whilst this study is not comprehensive, the interviews with the globally prominent organisations suggested that rather than difficulties in disciplines working together (projects are already in place to address known issues e.g. the BioMed Bridges project) new challenges are emerging in the way in which experimental and data science interact. Whilst Professor Dame Janet Thornton (EBI) notes that in the last 5 years the approaches are now far more integrated a divide still remains.
Research assessment and questions over where to publish in order to create a strong track record in order to further one’s career were not mentioned consistently as barriers, though this issue was also not raised explicitly. Likewise the issue of peer review not being able to fairly treat multidisciplinary proposals only came up in one of the internationally prominent institutes interviews and infrequently elsewhere, although the interviewee who mentioned the one specific incident did caution that their example was from some time ago. Another of the internationally prominent centres based in the UK reported a perception amongst their staff of difficulty in being funded for projects which crossed the scientific remit of more than one UK Research Council. However, for those working in academia, whilst they acknowledged that this perception existed amongst the research community, they had not experienced the problems which others speak of, and had therefore concluded that indeed there was no problem. For example, Prof Jennifer Kirkham (Leeds) felt that none of the advances that have been made at Leeds would have been possible without the funder (predominately EPSRC but also BBSRC and the TSB) having the vision and determination to fund activities in a larger, more concerted manner which resultantly yields results that are more than the sum of what might have been achieved by individuals. Having said that the nature of this study meant that the majority of those centres being interviewed had significant funding from initiatives and suchlike designed to stimulate interdisciplinarity and therefore there may be merit in investigating this issue further in any follow on work.
In specific research areas there still appear to be disconnects and barriers where one topic might not appreciate what could be learnt from elsewhere. For example, in the area of “big data” for health care, many of the challenges faced today are fundamentally engineering and physical science based challenges like reproducibility. These sort of challenges are being tackled through topics like modelling and simulation, which itself generates lots of data and thus has had to tackle these issues. However, the big data for health and modelling and simulation/high performance computing communities do not appear, to date, to have mixed to any great extent and therefore do not yet appreciate the ways in which advances in each could inform the other.
The final barrier which was mentioned by several times but in slightly different contexts is appropriately skilled people. The internationally prominent centres seem to be having difficulty in recruiting those who can work within the culture of their institute and yet perceive that they will gain value in terms of contributing to their “home” discipline whereas places such as the Leeds Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering have experienced difficulties in recruiting suitably qualified, interdisciplinary postdocs. However, in this later case the Leeds team are overcoming this lack of supply by running a CDT.
26 | P a g e
This study was not designed to be comprehensive and therefore compared the features of centres which, by their long-term establishment and presence as central university centres, are already successful by various measures. No attempt was made to locate and investigate “failed” centres. In interviewing the wide range of centre leaders it became quite obvious that, without exception, those leading the centres are dynamic and accomplished individuals with a clear vision or how their work will change the world. Their passion for the goal is infectious and no doubt pervades the centre, motivating and inspiring colleagues and the next generation of research leaders. The proportion of leaders with these culture setting attributes was not examined and therefore it may be that there is a shortage of such leaders, leading to weaker or fewer collaborative activities than might be desirable. Leadership skills and attributes could be explored further and optimal supply/demand ratios could be inferred by comparison of the UK with other leading research intensive economies and comparison with the public and private HLS sector.
Several of the internationally prominent HLS research institutes mentioned the issue of technology development. Clear views were expressed that outside of their organisations there is very little funding for technology development and yet it was vital to enabling research in biology and health sciences to advance significantly or at speed. Despite the fact that the sort of technology development discussed requires high level skills in engineering and/or physical sciences it doesn’t appear attractive to significant proportions of EPS researchers because the contribution to the state of knowledge in these areas doesn’t appear as significant as other research topics i.e. is it research or is it tool building? Funding for, and interest in, technological development to underpin HLS research remains a barrier.
6.0 Conclusions The UK has many collaborative EPS/HLS activities to be proud of, which have made significant advances in biology and health research in addition to the engineering and physical sciences. All of the UK’s research intensive institutions realise that some of the most challenging and interesting research questions lie at the intersection of traditional disciplinary boundaries and they are seeking to address these via strong core disciplinary departments/schools combined with cross-cutting, institution wide activities acting as hubs to allow researchers to share knowledge, creatively explore how they might work together, share facilities and tackle important challenges.
Whether they hail from large international collaborations or research intensive UK HEIs researchers recognise that research, in at least the health and life sciences, is increasingly complex and demands the application of a wide range of skills. For example in establishing the Centre for System Biology at Birmingham University the founders recognised “that it was time for biologists to move away from intuition and to begin to embrace the value of methods drawn from mathematics, engineering and computer science in the analysis of biological problems.5” When the disciplines partner together for mutual benefit significant advances are opened up in all fields.
Many of those interviewed for this study have had to learn the skills of interdisciplinarity but they are now exploiting those skills for significant national and international benefit and passing those skills to the next generation of researchers who are adept at multidisciplinary working from a very early point in their careers. Many of the interviewees credited students from Centres for Doctoral Training with having established new research directions and prompted new interdisciplinary collaborations to form around a common goal. Flexible funding models have allowed the leaders of such collaborative activities to move fluidly with the dynamic nature of interdisciplinary research, making the most of the time, skills and resources available to them to maximise the contribution of their centre.
5 http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/csb/about/index.aspx
27 | P a g e
Annex 1
Centres/Institutes/Networks identified. 153 individual centres were identified during the course of this study:
Imperial Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology Institute of Biomedical Engineering Institute of chemical biology Drug Discovery Centre Lifelong health project London Nanotechnology centre Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering Oxford Centre for Soft and Biological Matter Particle Therapy Cancer Research Institute Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Maths Oxford Centre for Integrative Systems Biology Institute of Laser Science Centre for Mathematical Biology LSI DTC Nottingham Bioengineering research centre Centre for Biomolecular sciences Institute of Biophysics, imaging and optical science Brain and Body Centre Centre for Mathematical Medicine and Biology Wolfson centre for STEM cells, tissue engineering and modelling centre Centre for Plant Integrative Biology, Nottingham Southampton Institute for Life Sciences Optoelectronics Research Centre Warwick Global Research Priority - Science and Technology for Health Centre for mechanochemical cell biology 28 | P a g e
Institute of Digital Healthcare Molecular organisation and assembly in cells Warwick Centre for Analytical Science Cambridge Unilever, Cambridge Centre for Molecular Science Informatics Physics of Medicine Initiative Cambridge Centre for Medical Materials Cambridge Computational Biology Institute Cambridge Cancer Centre MRC biostatistics unit Centre for Applied Medical Statistics Newcastle Biopharmaceutical Bioprocessing Technology Centre NanoLAB Manchester Biomedical Imaging Institute Manchester Cancer Research Centre Manchester Institute of Biotechnology Leeds Antimicrobial Research Centre The Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology The Leeds Institute for Genetics, Health and Therapeutics (LIGHT) Biomedical Health Research Centre Multidisciplinary cardiovascular research centre Centre of excellence in medical engineering Centre for Molecular Nanoscience Edinburgh SynthSys Centre for Translational and Chemical Biology Edinburgh Infectious Diseases COSMIC Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions Edinburgh Neuroscience Centre for Biomedical Engineering at Edinburgh The Scottish Mechanotransduction consortium Informatics Life Sciences Institute Durham The Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing 29 | P a g e
The Biophysical Institute Durham Centre for Bioimaging Technology Durham Centre for Crop Improvement Technology Centre for Bioactive chemistry XRDur Liverpool Mathematical Biology Research Cluster Research Centre in Mathematics and Modelling Centre for Mathematical Imaging Techniques Clinical Engineering Research Group Bioengineering, imaging technology and Informatics Research Group York York Neuroimaging Centre York Centre for Chronic Diseases York Centre for Complex Systems Analysis York Computational Immunology Lab Centre of Excellence in Mass Spectrometry Cardiff Sustainable Places Research Institute Health Modelling Centre Cymru Institute of Medical Engineering and Medical Physics Health Informatics Research Community Centre Arthritis Research UK Biomechanics and Bioengineering Research Centre Cardiff Institute of Tissue Engineering and Repair Sheffield The Krebs Institute The Mellanby Centre for Bone Research Centre for Membrane Interactions and Dynamics Centre for Bayesian Statistics in Health Economics Signal Processing in Neuroimaging and Systems Neuroscience Centre for signal processing and complex systems Centre for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Bioengineering and health technologies group within the department of dentistry Kroto Research Institute (Centre for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Group only, other groups not relevant to review) KCL Institute for mathematical and molecular biomedicine Kings Bioscience Institute 30 | P a g e
Biomedical Engineering Wellcome Trust EPSRC Centre of Excellence in Medical Engineering (MEC) Centre for biophotonics Centre for bioinformatics QMUL The Institute of Biomedical engineering and materials Wolfson Centre for Centre for Environmental and Preventive Medicine Wolfson Centre for Cancer Research UK Centre for Epidemiology, Mathematics, and Statistics QUB No centres which comply with the definition used in this study were identified at QUB. This is not due to a lack of these activities but a facet of the way they are presented externally. For example within the school of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering the Synthetic and Bioorganic Chemistry (SynBIOC) activity clearly states: "SynBIOC provides a unique environment for innovative training of synthetic chemists in order to facilitate their integration into the ever-evolving world of interdisciplinary research at the Physical and Life Science interface. To achieve excellence in interdisciplinary research of this type, the hands-on and taught training activities maximise acquisition of expertise" This is also true for themes within the medical and life sciences faculty, for example the Pharmaceutical Science and Practice theme clearly states that it receives funding from MRC, EPSRC and BBSRC, amongst others as a demonstration of the breadth of research activity. UCL UCL Systems Biology The Computational Life and Medical Sciences Network UCL Computational Biology COMPLEX: Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology UCL Institute of Biomedical Engineering Birkbeck The Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology at UCL/Birkbeck Bloomsbury Centre for Bioinformatics Essex The Computational Intelligence Centre Essex Biomedical Sciences Institute (EBSI) Centre for Radicals and Oxidative Stress (CROSS) Bath The Centre for Extremophile Research Centre for Regenerative Medicine Invert Centre for imaging science Centre for orthopaedic biomechanics Centre for mathematical biology Bath Neuroscience network Cancer Research at Bath Sussex Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics - CCNR 31 | P a g e
Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science Loughborough EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Regenerative Medicine Centre for Biological Engineering Leicester Centre for Mathematical Modelling Centre for Chemical Biology Centre for systems neuroscience Life Science Interface Mathematical and Computational Biology Cancer Theme Molecular and Cellular Bioscience Research at the University of Leicester Lancaster Medical and Pharmaceutical Statistics Research Unit Royal Holloway Centre for Systems and Synthetic Biology Glasgow Biomedical Engineering Research Division The Centre for Cell Engineering Institute of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology Robertson centre for biostatistics Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (CCNi) James Watt nanofabrication Centre Mathematics applied to the Life Sciences Group Joint Research Institute in Mechanics of Materials, Structures and Bioengineering UEA Centre for Molecular and Structural Biochemistry UEA Computational Biology Laboratory EARS (East Anglian Research Synthesis network) is a monthly cross-school seminar series on 2 levels. Exeter Exeter Biomedical Physics Biocatalysis Centre Systems Biology Bristol Water and Health Research Centre Advanced Composites Centre for Innovation and Science (ACCIS) Predictive Life Sciences (PLS) is a University of Bristol research theme which promotes interdisciplinary approaches to life science research including systems biology, synthetic biology and bioinformatics. Bristol Neuroscience Bristol Centre for Complexity Science
32 | P a g e
Bristol Vision Institute Birmingham Centre for Systems Biology Physical Sciences of Imaging for the Biomedical Sciences (PSIBS Biomedical Imaging Centre) CRNI - Collaborative Research Network in Imaging and Visualisation University of Birmingham Systems Science for Health initiative Mathematics in the Plant Sciences Study Group series, Bio-medical and Micro Engineering Research Centre e-health and biomedical informatics research
Structures Research only Research + CDT Physical + Network 45 8 Network 50 Physical 36 Distributed Physical + Network 5 1 Distributed Physical 5 Centre for Doctoral Training 0 3 141 12
Research Areas Research area Number of centres bio info 6 bio pharma bio proc 3 bio stat 3 bio/med eng/mats 31 cell/tissue eng 3 chem bio 23 comp bio 15 imaging 15
33 | P a g e
math bio 15 med phys 4 med stat 6 nano 3 plant bio 3 regen med 2 Sys and syn bio 9 bio med 2 bio phys 12 bio tech 2 comp med 3 med infor 1 161
Application Areas Application Area Number of centres cancer 6 cardiovascular 2 chronic disease 1 immunology 1 infectious 1 disease lifelong health 6 neuro 10 27
34 | P a g e
7
6
5
4
3 Number of HEIs ofNumber
2
1
0 0 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 Number of collaborative HLS/EPS Centres
Figure 5
Total number of HEIs by number of collaborative HLS/EPS centres.
35 | P a g e