Reflections on Different Aspects of Interdisciplinarity in a Research Career

The modern educational and professional system favours specialization within each individual, while encouraging collaboration amongst people of diverse backgrounds. More often than not we find ourselves working with a team of experts trained in different domains. Although such an environment promotes creativity, peer learning, and productivity, it also poses boundaries for individuals of different disciplines to overcome. In this essay, I reflect upon the time of my doctoral research, during which I worked on an interdisciplinary topic and interacted with people of very different training from mine. These experiences helped me gain insights into the potentials as well as difficulties in a multi-disciplinary situation, which has proven useful in my scientific career. I believe similar principles can apply in many other settings, and by sharing these thoughts I hope to show the readers various ways to look at interdisciplinarity that we may all encounter in of our lives.