Student Life and Learning Digest

Evolving Interdisciplinarity at MIT

Christine Ortiz
Dean for Graduate Education

When I speak with many of you at the events I attend, I often hear a desire for more interdisciplinary interactions outside of your laboratories, departments, and classrooms. I also receive requests for advice on how to go about initiating and building interdisciplinary collaborations, and questions on what the future holds for interdisciplinarity at MIT. This is a topic close to my heart, as I have carried out interdisciplinary research for almost 20 years focused on the multiscale mechanics of musculoskeletal and exoskeletal tissues.

MIT maintains leadership in the classical disciplines (academic departments), which are simultaneously overlaid by a dense “matrix” of more than 55 cross-cutting interdisciplinary research centers, laboratories, curricular and co-curricular programs. Opportunities for students include...

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Students are asking...

Q: Will MIT be more focused on new building projects and new laboratories, or renovations of old buildings? What construction plans in general are in the works? How are these building plans and projects decided?

Read response from the Associate Provost Martin A. Schmidt and the Executive Vice President and Treasurer Israel Ruiz

Q: How does spiritual life at MIT affect the other aspects of MIT life?

Read the response from the Chaplain to the Institute