UCLA would improve with more focus on multidisciplinary research

As one of the largest research universities in the nation, UCLA can boast of having discovered the first cases of AIDS, as well as having made weather forecasting a modern-day science.

While the faculty of UCLA is renowned for its innovative research, UCLA could better its reputation as a top research facility by focusing more on multidisciplinary research.

In the 2009-2010 fiscal year, UCLA received more than $1 billion in research funding, $60 million more than it had garnered in the previous year. Roberto Peccei, Vice Chancellor for research, attributed the increase in funding to UCLA’s interdisciplinary work.

UCLA should capitalize on this support by establishing labs that combine different disciplines in the tradition of MIT’s famous Media Lab. This research center uses cutting edge technology and multidisciplinary perspectives to create innovative products, such as electronic ink and emotion sensors.

Research labs that incorporate multiple disciplines are more innovative because they search many fields for explanations to phenomena, said Andrew Galperin, a graduate student in social psychology.

For example, Galperin said that a lab run by Martie Haselton, a professor of psychology and communication, uses evolutionary perspectives to explain psychological practices. This approach is very uncommon, he added.

Haselton’s lab pioneered the idea that ovulating women are more likely to be receptive to sex from a person that is not their partner if their partner is unattractive. Here, biology is used to explain a social practice.

Multidisciplinary labs are beneficial because they often offer a more complete overview of a specific research topic, and are clearly the direction in which UCLA needs to head in terms of research.

Such research at MIT has produced notable results.

A folding car, named the CityCar, was designed to have four in-wheel electric motors instead of a traditional engine and power train. This enables the car to park sideways, fit into the tiniest of spaces and rotate on its own axis.

The media lab at MIT is also innovating the way occupational therapists deal with autistic children. Researchers have developed an electrodermal sensor ““ a wristband that keeps a running, real-time measurement of an autistic child’s excitement level during therapy.

Therapists that had previously guessed at the mood of an autistic child can now obtain a more precise answer.

UCLA has made progress toward combining multiple subjects through the implementation of a few innovative labs, speaker series such as the UCLA Center for Behavior, Culture and Evolution and the freshman cluster program.

Barriers still need to be broken down, though.

“There should be a move towards (creating) more communication between the two campuses,” said Tuck Ngun, a graduate student in human genetics. “There could be more events where people got together and talked together.”

Indeed, getting professors to simply talk to each other about their research projects is a first step toward establishing multidisciplinary work.

The Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research could also reach out to different departments and form professional relationships, while assisting research faculty in collaborating on various projects.

According to Erna Aridzanyan, research director of the Strategic Research Initiatives group at the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, UCLA is headed in this direction.

“There is an awareness that we have to encourage more collaboration,” she said. “If you think of some areas such as the language department, students may lose interest if you are just teaching the language. Linking it to digital humanities and creating iPhone applications (is what will make it interesting),” she said.

While UCLA might not have money to spare for research because of recent budget cuts, multidisciplinary labs do attract more funding, as the numbers from the last fiscal year show.
Recently, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Academic Senate announced a $25,000 grant for transdisciplinary research in order to encourage North and South campus research labs to establish relationships with each other, said Aridzanyan.

A requirement of the grant is that the principal investigator be from a North campus department.

Private funding is also another option, as donors might take a specific interest in research that is multidisciplinary and produces concrete innovations.

Multidisciplinary labs hold value that cannot be ignored. If UCLA is to continue as one of the top research universities in the nation, it needs to keep up with research programs such as the MIT Media Lab and work toward creating labs that are geared for the future.