Becoming a 21st Century Scientist: Cognitive Practices, Identity Formation, and Learning in Integrative Systems Biology

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

The project examines the requirements for becoming a researcher in 21st century bioscience research--what the PIs call a "transdisciplinary" researcher. Transdisciplinary is defined as a situation "where researchers have deep disciplinary knowledge and methods from one discipline but inhabit a research space in which there is interpenetration of one or more other disciplines." The investigation specifically looks at the cognitive and learning practices for both undergraduates and graduate students, in the emerging transdisciplinary field of Integrative Systems Biology (ISB) where the research lies at the intersection of the computational, biological, and engineering sciences. The PIs will conduct historical and ethnographic research on learners in two laboratories--one inhabited by computational scientists and in another that conducts biological experiments, computational modeling, and engineering. Using observations and interviews, the ethnographies will investigate how learning unfolds in the labs, how newcomers are apprenticed, how they make choices regarding the cognitive tools and practices they appropriate, which ones they discard, and the research paths they take based on these experiences. The historical dimension examines historical records through the lens of cognitive science research. Data collection includes publications, grant proposals, dissertation proposals, presentations, laboratory notebooks, emails, technological artifacts and interviews on lab history. The project explores how interdisiciplinary research in general moves forward, a topic that is critical to the conduct of 21st century science and to the education of 21st century scientists. The PIs define interdisciplinary research as research that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspective and concepts/theories from two or more disciplines. Thus, the PIs consider interdisciplinary to be a broad, overarching description, while transdisicplinary research concerns a kind of interdisciplinary work that leads to "interpenetation" of one more other disciplines. The field of ISB is such a transdisciplinary field and can make significant contributions to several pressing problems related to health and the environment.