The ideas man
[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 5, No. 3
8 June - 12 July 2009 ]
Professor Peter Rathjen believes the removal of barriers to new ideas and a ten-year outlook for emerging institutes will give us the tools to cope with a challenging future. As told to Shane Cahill.
The genie is out of the bottle and Peter Rathjen couldn’t be happier. “If you remove barriers, it turns out that academics are naturally engaging of others,” says Professor Rathjen.
“They are driven by ideas – that’s why they work in universities – and if you enable them to pursue ideas without restriction that’s exactly what they’ll do.”
After taking up the position of Deputy Vice-Chancellor in March 2008 with responsibility for research, world renowned stem cell authority Professor Rathjen began a program to harness Melbourne’s research breadth to meet contemporary challenges.
“What we’re seeing is the marshalling of enormous intellectual energy across the institution,” he says.
“We’re seeing significant new projects and new funding bids that we hadn’t previously conceptualised. I think the reason is that our researchers are pursuing their interests in an interdisciplinary context, focused on problem-solving.”
The first of the new multidisciplinary institutes was the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, followed by the Melbourne Institute of Materials; and the Melbourne Energy Institute. The May Federal Budget delivered funding for the Melbourne Neural Engineering Institute. Proposals for several other institutes spanning the breadth of University activity are well advanced.
The institutes are virtual rather than a physical presence with an anticipated ten-year life span.
“It’s a conversation. We get top down ideas and bottom up ideas, we look for opportunities in the external marketplace and from this complexity of internal and external drivers we synthesise directions forward.”
Professor Rathjen sees the new institutes as a means of the University meeting the demands of society and engaging with the new ways of research required.
“We have an aspiration to being a publicly-spirited institution and we have to inspect what it means to be publicly-spirited in our research agenda. One of the things that we have decided we would like to do is to harness that magnificent research strength that is Melbourne University in pursuit of the most pressing societal problems.”
According to Professor Rathjen the institutes will not necessarily manage the research projects. Rather they will allow researchers from across a range of disciplines to self-assemble to tackle what he terms “really big challenges”.
“Those challenges are largely defined by society rather than defined by the researchers themselves.”
To meet this shift to alignment with external problems Melbourne’s institutes build on the trend of the past 20 years away from single discipline alone to interdisciplinary research.
“We find within our institutes researchers from quite different disciplinary backgrounds coming together united by a wish to solve a common problem and it seems it’s at those interfaces that much of the more exciting research is done,” he says.
Such a seismic shift in the focus of research calls into question the form of the existing foundation of research, the PhD.
“We are having to have a hard think about what a PhD program means for this University because our PhD structure is basically disciplinary based,” Professor Rathjen says.
“My understanding is that in the best US universities now more than 50 per cent of PhD students are enrolling in interdisciplinary projects and we’re going to have to find our way to enable that trend.”
Professor Rathjen believes the Melbourne Model’s core of depth and breadth will allow for such a transformation. But the change goes much further than curriculum or administrative issues.
“What we’re really exploring is research in the context and service of society. To advance that you are going to have to bring together more than one disciplinary focus.”
So how is this new social engagement going to emerge?
“It’s a challenge. We’re going to have to try things and see which ones work and discard those things that don’t work. A lot depends on leadership.”
The prizes of success are substantial with a brace of multi-million dollar projects and potential partnerships in development.
“The institutes are very powerful ways of articulating our research to the external world. We’re big and we’re complex and it has been hard for us to find a way to explain to others what we do.
“As we assemble under terms like energy or materials, those outside the University can look in and see what we do and from that we find we are becoming a target for various forms of partnerships, sometimes with external large corporations, sometimes with government bodies and sometimes with benefactors who are very interested in funding research and like to fund it through these large thematic approaches.”
The Melbourne institutes are also in the process of establishing partnerships with leading universities around the world.
Secondary education too will need to take account of these moves beyond single discipline research.
“My sense is that cross-disciplinary research is based in disciplinary expertise. You’ve got to be trained in discipline-based skills, but you’ve got to combine these with the breadth that enables you to interpret your training in a social context.
“The Melbourne Model, with its emphasis on both depth and breadth, is ideally suited to this.”
What are the next areas for examination?
“We see these institutes having a natural life of about a decade and therefore we want to form them around areas that will be of enduring value. We want to make sure we tackle things that are bound to be important in ten years’ time.”
Emerging areas cited by Professor Rathjen include materials; energy and sustainable societies; social equity; creative cultures; brain science and communication.
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