In an effort to bring together the strengths of universities, former director of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s supercomputer center Daniel A. Reed will bring together a research center aimed at unifying both science and the arts through the benefit of technology.
Reed’s design — called the Renaissance Computing Institute — will combine the resources at Duke University, North Carolina State University and the Triangle Research Park at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Several corporate groups also pledged their support, including International Business Machines (IBM), Nortel and GlaxoSmithKline.
According to Reed, the Renaissance Institute is about looking broadly at how research touches on humanities and the arts and how it affects scientific discovery.
“[The] notion was really to capture breadth and diversity [of the two groups],” Reed said. “You want to recognize the expression of creativity [in both science and the arts] is driven by the same human creative impulses.”
Reed attributed his idea to an earlier concept projected by UIUC professor Donna Cox.
Reed said Cox brought together teams of students with backgrounds in computer science and the arts to solve various challenges. Cox called the groups Renaissance teams.
“The notion of bringing people together from diverse groups is very general and very applicable anywhere,” Reed said.
However, bringing people together may not be such an easy task.
According to University Research Park Director Mark Bugher, many researchers can become accustomed to the way they approach tasks within their own field.
“You build a comfort zone working with your colleagues,” Bugher said. “You have a certain style and way of doing things. It’s the way of the world.”
Still, Bugher said the idea of blending the arts and sciences was a good one, since oftentimes those in the arts can feel left out due to the “star treatment” researchers in scientific fields often receive.
“[Research] is driven by the market, and the market in this university is usually science and the biotechnologies,” Bugher said. “That has the effect of kicking out a lot of technologies.”
The University of Wisconsin, third in the nation for research expenditures, may soon begin their own multidisciplinary approach to attacking research as well. Unlike Reed’s Renaissance Institute, however, there are no plans for the Madison-based Wisconsin Institute of Discovery (WID) to combine the arts and sciences.
Instead the WID, expected to be located east of where Luther’s Blues currently sits on University Avenue, will combine science disciplines to discover new research methods.
The WID was announced last November, when Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle committed $375 million to a research center combining biology, bioinformatics, computer science, engineering and nanotechnology, according to a release.
Bugher said the interdisciplinary approach to discovery is replacing the old single-discipline approach.
“[We are] breaking down the silos [and] working with colleagues across disciplinary lines,” Bugher said. “The old days of disciplines being boxed into little packages are most likely gone.”
Bugher added a large part of researchers’ multidisciplinary approach has to do with students.
“Students really drive this,” Bugher said. “If students continue to clamor for this kind of curriculum, that’s what they’re going to get.”
