Multidisciplinary Research Seminar

Tuesday 3 March 2020

16:00-17:00
Seminar Room C209

Seminar
Building an interdisciplinary project, conduct it and succeed! 

Yannick Saintigny

EU Affairs Senior Officer
French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA)

Note

Following travel restrictions due to the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak, this seminar will be performed via videoconference.

Abstract

Interdisciplinary research integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research practice. However, in interdisciplinary research projects, inexperienced researchers can be overwhelmed by the resulting complexity. An active strategy is thus needed to integrate the different disciplines in a successful interdisciplinary project starting with a preliminary research phase, open-ended, to determine the disciplines to be involved. Moreover, integrating disciplines together need efforts to overcome communication problems among researchers. In interdisciplinary research, personality and attitudes of researchers are indeed at least as important for success as discipline base and specialization. Coordinator of an interdisciplinary research must take great care of the consortium building and the funding distribution starting at the beginning of the proposal writing in order to successfully complete the project and maximise the impacts. During this seminar, we will present and discuss these multiple faces of such projects.