To Our Readers
Collaboration among investigators is a constant, rather than an exception in research and scholarship. In recognizing the importance and ubiquity of collaboration, we acknowledge the social dimensions of research and the modern university as an unusually hospitable site for innovative problem solving. With its broad range of expertise in the basic and applied sciences, in the humanities, arts, and the professions, the modern university is without peer in intellectual diversity.
This issue of Explorations celebrates different kinds of collaboration among individual investigators at the University. In every case, collaboration makes possible the more adequate construction of the research problem—and its solution. For some investigators, collaboration accelerates the translation or commercialization of pioneering basic research. In others, collaboration among disparate fields—orthopaedic surgery and economics, or pediatric cardiology and biomedical engineering—can dramatically improve patient quality of life.
These examples suggest significant untapped potential for research within our academic community. A top priority in our research plan is to increase collaboration across all fields and to immerse students of all levels in research as well. Some collaborations will simply be the result of serendipitous interactions. Our plan, however, is to make opportunities for collaboration a defining feature of discovery, invention, and innovation at the University.
Thomas C. Skalak
Vice President for Research
