Grants for Collaborative Research: Understanding Innovative Science: The Case of the Wisconsin Institues for Discovery

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

Introduction What is distinctive about contemporary science? This question is addressed in this project by examining how emerging ideas and social arrangements of contemporary science affect the practices and outcomes of scientific research in one strategic case, the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. These institutes are research organizations that explicitly seek to break disciplinary barriers, forge new tools for public/private collaboration, and speed the application of transformative science. Intellectual Merit The project will engage in this analysis by using multiple methods including ethnography, oral history, and archival analysis to engage in historical and contemporary comparisons. It will explore how the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery embody what is different about contemporary science as well as what remains the same. Three questions guide the research: 1. How do widely discussed ideas about such issues as interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and public/private collaboration shape the evolution of a new institution? 2. How do these ideas affect scientific work as well as the public work of forging relationships with the Institutes' constituencies? 3. How (and for whom) do new ways of doing science succeed? What new metrics are needed to capture their success? Potential Broader Impacts The project will support graduate research training and scholarly publication, expand a publicly accessible electronic archive, enabling others to study the Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery. Broad dissemination of findings will be accelerated through a concluding symposium that brings together the researchers, stakeholders in the Institutes, science policymakers, and invited scholarly commentators. A policy-oriented whitepaper and a book summarizing the results of the symposium will also serve to broaden the projects overall impact. The results of this project will have the potential to guide future investment in research and research infrastructure. It will add new evidence to ongoing discussions about the value of interdisciplinarity, the pros and cons of public/private collaborations, and the community-wide effects of centers and institutes.