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September 30, 2004
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As part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, more than $36 million is being awarded to fund 21 Exploratory Centers for Interdisciplinary Research. This trans-NIH initiative, managed by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), seeks to lower artificial barriers that divide biomedical researchers and impede scientific progress.
Biomedical research traditionally has been organized much like a series of cottage industries, lumping researchers into broad areas of scientific interest and then grouping them into distinct, departmentally based specialties. To remove these organizational barriers and advance science, the new specialized centers will make it easier for scientists to conduct interdisciplinary research and will help them to forge new disciplines from existing ones. By engaging seemingly unrelated disciplines, traditional gaps in terminology, approach and methodology will also be gradually eliminated. Exploratory Centers for Interdisciplinary Research will address problems as varied as antimicrobial resistance, diabetes, insect-borne diseases, obesity, asthma, and new directions in stroke neurorehabilitation.
"With these new Exploratory Centers, we hope to remove roadblocks to collaboration so that a true meeting of minds can take place that will broaden the scope of investigation, yield fresh and possibly unexpected insights, and create solutions to biomedical problems that have not been solved using traditional, disciplinary approaches," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D.
Through the NIH Roadmap, initial funding is being provided for three years to support planning activities for the interdisciplinary centers. This is intended to lay the foundation and prepare investigators to submit a subsequent application for substantial, long-term support through an Interdisciplinary Research Consortium.
"By providing this sustained and systematic support to interdisciplinary research through these new Exploratory Centers, we hope scientists can make progress on some of the more complex biomedical issues we face," said Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D., Director, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and Co-chair, NIH Roadmap Interdisciplinary Research Teams of the Future Working Group. "Integrating different disciplines in entirely new ways holds the promise of opening up currently unimagined avenues of scientific inquiry and, in the process, forming whole new disciplines."
The NIH Roadmap is a series of far-reaching initiatives designed to transform the nation's medical research capabilities and speed the movement of research discoveries from the bench to the bedside. It provides a framework of the priorities the NIH must address in order to optimize its entire research portfolio and lays out a vision for a more efficient and productive system of medical research.
Examples of the Exploratory Centers for Interdisciplinary Research
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