Becoming a 21st Century Scientist: Cognitive Practices, Identity Formation, and Learning in Integrative Systems Biology

该项目考察了成为21世纪生物科学研究的研究人员的要求--即PI所称的“跨学科”研究人员。跨学科被定义为一种情况，即研究人员从一个学科拥有深厚的学科知识和方法，但处于一个或多个其他学科相互渗透的研究空间中。这项调查特别关注本科生和研究生的认知和学习实践，在综合系统生物学(ISB)这一新兴的跨学科领域，研究位于计算、生物和工程科学的交叉点。PIS将在两个实验室对学习者进行历史和人种学研究--一个实验室由计算科学家居住，另一个实验室进行生物实验、计算建模和工程学。通过观察和采访，这些民族志将调查学习在实验室中是如何展开的，新来者是如何成为学徒的，他们如何选择合适的认知工具和实践，他们抛弃哪些工具，以及他们根据这些经验采取的研究道路。历史维度通过认知科学研究的视角审视历史记录。数据收集包括出版物、拨款提案、论文提案、演示文稿、实验室笔记本、电子邮件、技术文物和关于实验室历史的采访。该项目探索跨学科研究如何总体上向前发展，这是一个对21世纪科学行为和21世纪科学家教育至关重要的话题。PIs将跨学科研究定义为整合了两个或更多学科的信息、数据、技术、工具、视角和概念/理论的研究。因此，PIs认为跨学科是一个宽泛的总体描述，而跨学科研究涉及的是一种跨学科工作，导致另一个学科的“相互渗透”。ISB领域是这样一个跨学科领域，可以对与健康和环境有关的几个紧迫问题作出重大贡献。

The project examines the requirements for becoming a researcher in 21st century bioscience research--what the PIs call a "transdisciplinary" researcher. Transdisciplinary is defined as a situation "where researchers have deep disciplinary knowledge and methods from one discipline but inhabit a research space in which there is interpenetration of one or more other disciplines."The investigation specifically looks at the cognitive and learning practices for both undergraduates and graduate students, in the emerging transdisciplinary field of Integrative Systems Biology (ISB) where the research lies at the intersection of the computational, biological, and engineering sciences. The PIs will conduct historical and ethnographic research on learners in two laboratories--one inhabited by computational scientists and in another that conducts biological experiments, computational modeling, and engineering. Using observations and interviews, the ethnographies will investigate how learning unfolds in the labs, how newcomers are apprenticed, how they make choices regarding the cognitive tools and practices they appropriate, which ones they discard, and the research paths they take based on these experiences. The historical dimension examines historical records through the lens of cognitive science research. Data collection includes publications, grant proposals, dissertation proposals, presentations, laboratory notebooks, emails, technological artifacts and interviews on lab history.The project explores how interdisiciplinary research in general moves forward, a topic that is critical to the conduct of 21st century science and to the education of 21st century scientists. The PIs define interdisciplinary research as research that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspective and concepts/theories from two or more disciplines. Thus, the PIs consider interdisciplinary to be a broad, overarching description, while transdisicplinary research concerns a kind of interdisciplinary work that leads to "interpenetation" of one more other disciplines. The field of ISB is such a transdisciplinary field and can make significant contributions to several pressing problems related to health and the environment.