When Disciplines Meet: Opportunities and Obstacles in Multidisciplinary Collaborations

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Importance of collaboration

Collaboration has become central to contemporary science. The 2024 Physiology Nobel laureate Victor Ambrose remarked that “two people talking about something they’re really interested in is more than just twice one person. Because the exchange of ideas can be catalytic.” Advances in communication technologies and research infrastructures have enabled collaborations that span institutions and countries (Jones et al., 2008). Collaborative publications now outnumber single‑author works across many disciplines.

In this context, scientists increasingly ask how to work effectively across disciplinary boundaries. What does it take to initiate and maintain productive collaborations between different fields, and what conditions help them succeed?

 

Forms of cross‑disciplinary research

Scientific questions often sit at the interface of multiple domains. Approaches such as computational protein design, quantum computing, and structural biology illustrate how progress depends on combining diverse expertise.

Cross‑disciplinary work can take several forms (E. Slot, nd), such as:-

  • Multidisciplinarity involves studying a topic from several disciplinary perspectives in parallel. Each discipline retains its own theories, methods, and standards, but the combined view provides a broader understanding.
  • Interdisciplinarity seeks to integrate concepts and methods from different disciplines to address a shared question that cannot be fully understood from a single disciplinary standpoint.
  • Transdisciplinarity extends beyond academia by involving societal stakeholders (e.g. policymakers, industry, communities) in framing and addressing complex problems.

Inter‑ and transdisciplinary work often require new institutional structures, dedicated funding schemes, and substantial training outside one’s home field. A lack of formal interdisciplinary training can make these approaches difficult to pursue.

Multidisciplinary research is often more accessible. It allows researchers to collaborate with colleagues from other fields while maintaining their disciplinary foundations. For example, foliage development can be explored through biological approaches (genes and signalling pathways), physical approaches (mechanics of growth under gravity), and mathematical approaches (symmetries and generative algorithms in leaf patterns) (Prusinkiewicz & Lindenmayer, 1990). Such projects benefit from collaborations that bring together complementary perspectives on the same phenomenon.

 

Building multidisciplinary collaborations

Before entering a collaboration, ECRs benefit from acquiring basic familiarity with the concepts, methods, and constraints of the other discipline(s). This does not require full retraining, but some first‑hand exposure (courses, workshops, short projects). This makes it easier to recognize which questions are genuinely suited to a multidisciplinary approach, understand what is feasible for collaborators in another field and evaluate potential collaborators more rationally (Jorge Alegre Cebollada, n.d.).

Collaborations arise because partners have specific needs—data, methods, conceptual frameworks, or access to systems. From the outset, it is important to articulate what each party expects from the collaboration, what each partner concretely contributes (data, analysis, infrastructure, supervision) and how success will be assessed (publications, methods, tools, training, etc.). Explicit discussion of these points reduces the risk of superficial or misaligned collaborations.

Different stages of your career provide for different opportunities to establish such collaborations. PhD aspirants can develop PhD proposals along with supporting PI/s, to initiate interdisciplinary research, encompassing approaches with which they are comfortable, and employing them upon a system which the PI/s have expertise in. Another approach could be to build a multidisciplinary collaboration during the course of your PhD, by working as a guest researcher in another lab. This way, you can add some interdisciplinary insights into your project, while not compromising upon your core expertise.

Similarly, postdoctoral researchers are at a career stage that is fertile for multidisciplinary collaborations. One can identify techniques and approaches from another domain, which can help answer some questions, or generate some new insights into their domain. In such a case, choosing an expert in a domain, which is not your expertise, is essential. Postdoctoral  researchers can apply for several grants for such multidisciplinary ideas. Several grant opportunities are available for postdoctoral researchers, which value multidisciplinary ideas. These include (but are not restricted to) HFSP program (HFSP, n.d.), NWO grants(NWO, n.d.), Wellcome grants (Wellcome, n.d.), MEXT fellowships (MEXT, n.d.), and so on.

Across career stages, the starting point is to identify where approaches from another discipline could bring genuinely new insight to existing questions. Regular exposure to seminars, colloquia, and conferences outside one’s home field can help in recognizing such opportunities and in meeting potential collaborators.

 

Sustaining multidisciplinary collaborations

Initiating a collaboration is only the first step; maintaining it over the timescale needed for meaningful results is often more challenging. Multidisciplinary projects frequently proceed at a different pace than work within a single discipline, owing to methodological adaptation, additional communication needs, and the coordination of diverse schedules and constraints.

Communication about one’s expectations, concerns, ideas, and approaches becomes of paramount importance in these scenarios. Teams must try to develop provisions for communication amongst the researchers. This way, communication about scientific concepts and insights would be ensured, and expectations would be more clearly stated. Additionally, communication also involves developing an academic language that all the parties can understand. This ensures that the parties do not end up bombarding each other with scientific jargon, and everyone gets on the same page about the insights gained from their research (Vladova et al., 2025). Clear communication about progress, difficulties, and evolving expectations is fundamental to keeping all partners engaged.

Trust is also an important factor here, especially if the multidisciplinary team has more than 2 members. Only when trust is established between all parties can better and more open knowledge sharing take place. Both communication and trust would be challenged by the presence of conflicts within the group. Hence, teams should try to balance the interests of everyone involved by discussing outcomes such as publication strategy, the possibility of patents, and so on, quite early in the collaboration. These initiatives and decisions require effective leadership to materialize. The group leaders should be on the same page about the expectations that they develop from each other, as well as from everyone else involved in the collaboration.

Additionally, one must also realize that no team functions without mutual respect and compassion for everyone. Hence, delays in deliverables, changes of schedules, lack of conclusive results, and so on should be understood and should not be ridiculed extensively. Multidisciplinary research is more difficult than research in the home domain for everyone. This makes it likely for individuals to not be as productive while working, as compared to their productivity in their home domains.

 

Outlook

Natural phenomena do not respect disciplinary boundaries: mathematical structures, physical processes, chemical reactions, and biological mechanisms jointly shape the systems scientists study. Disciplinary specialization is necessary for depth, but it also limits any individual’s capacity to address complex problems alone.

Multidisciplinary collaborations offer one way to counterbalance this limitation by bringing together complementary expertise. They are demanding but potentially highly rewarding. With appropriate preparation, clear communication, and thoughtful management, researchers at different career stages can use such collaborations to advance both their own work and the broader understanding of natural systems.

 

References

B. F. Jones, S. Wuchty, and B. Uzzi, “Multi-University Research Teams: Shifting Impact, Geography, and Stratification in Science,” Science (1979)., vol. 322, no. 5905, pp. 1259–1262, Nov. 2008, doi: 10.1126/science.1158357.

E.Slot, “Multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinarity; what is what?,” https://www.uu.nl/en/education/educational-development-training/knowledge-dossiers/interdisciplinary-education-and-cel/multi-inter-and-transdisciplinarity-what-is-what.

P. Prusinkiewicz and A. Lindenmayer, The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants. New York, NY: Springer New York, 1990. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4613-8476-2.

Jorge Alegre Cebollada, “Multidisciplinary research for early-career scientists,” https://network.febs.org/posts/multidisciplinary-research-for-early-career-scientists.

“HFSP,” https://www.hfsp.org/funding/hfsp-funding/research-grants.

“NWO,” https://www.nwo.nl/en/apply-funding-how-does-it-work.

“Wellcome,” https://wellcome.org/research-funding.

“MEXT,” https://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-fellow/.

G. Vladova, J. Haase, and S. Friesike, “Why, with whom, and how to conduct interdisciplinary research? A review from a researcher’s perspective,” Sci. Public Policy, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 165–180, Mar. 2025, doi: 10.1093/scipol/scae070.

 

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About the Author

Atharv Ambekar

Atharv is a second year PhD student at the Swammerdam Institute of Life Sciences (SILS) in University of Amsterdam (UvA) and a 2026 Plantae Fellow . His current research focusses on the metabolic dialogue between plants and microorganisms in the rhizosphere, and its role in orchestration of biotic interactions in the rhizosphere. Find him on X: @AtharvAmbekar2 | Bluesky: @atharvambekar2.bsky.social.