A Case Study of the Cross-disciplinary Use of Mathematical Constructs in Computational Biology as Tool Migration

该奖项支持一名博士后研究科学中工具迁移机制的项目；也就是说，一个学科对最初由另一个学科发展和使用的既定数学结构的新颖使用。具体来说，该项目将侧重于计算生物学，这是生物学的一个分支，应用神经科学的数学模型来研究非神经系统的信息处理。该项目的总体目标是更好地理解促进顺利和富有成效的跨学科交流的机制，这是科学政策的一个重要目标。她计划向科学哲学家和生物、认知科学家们传播她的研究成果。她还计划通过开发和发表一个关于工具迁移概念的公开讲座，将她的研究成果传播给本科生和感兴趣的公众。她的项目的首要目标是激励学生和鼓励工作的科学家创造性地和更批判性地思考已经（或可能）在各自学科中使用的工具。这是一个研究项目，研究跨学科科学是如何在计算生物学的背景下产生的。该项目将解决三个具体的研究问题：类比推理在科学实践中的作用是什么？同样的理论应用于多个学科（如神经科学和生物学中的计算理论），在这些学科中产生相同类型的解释吗？最后，科学家如何通过采用跨学科的研究工具来转移或整合学科知识？为了解决这些问题，博士后将被安置在一个计算实验室，以获得有助于她分析计算生物学出版物中描述的研究工具的见解（使用她在博弈论中开发的工具迁移的博士论文中开发的工具迁移框架）。本研究成果将以多种方式传播：组织一次以解释统一为主题的跨学科学术研讨会，在两次以类比推理和跨学科知识转移为主题的哲学会议上发表演讲，在同行评审期刊上发表一篇科学论文和两篇哲学论文，并向本科生，实践科学家和感兴趣的个人进行公开讲座。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports a postdoctoral researcher in a project that studies the mechanism of tool migration in science; that is, the novel use by one discipline of established mathematical constructs that were first developed and used by a different discipline. Specifically, the project will focus on computational biology, a subfield of biology that applies mathematical models from neuroscience to study information processing in non-neural systems. The overarching goal of the project is to gain a better understanding of a mechanism that promotes smooth and productive interdisciplinary exchange, an important goal of science policy. The researcher plans to disseminate the results of her project to philosophers of science and to biological and cognitive scientists. She also plans to disseminate her results to undergraduates and the interested pubic by developing and delivering a public lecture on the concept of tool migration. The overarching goal of her project is to inspire students and to encourage working scientists to think both creatively and more critically about the tools that have been (or could be) used in their respective disciplines.This is a research project to study how interdisciplinary science came about in the context of computational biology. The project will address three specific research questions: What is the role of analogical reasoning in scientific practice? Does the same theory applied in multiple disciplines (such as the theory of computation in neuroscience and in biology) produce the same type of explanation in those disciplines? Finally, how do scientists transfer or integrate disciplinary knowledge by adopting research tools across disciplines? To address these questions, the postdoc will be embedded in a computational lab in order to gain insights that will facilitate her analysis of the research tools described in computational biology publications (using the framework of tool migration that she developed in her doctoral dissertation work on migrations of tools developed in game theory). Results of this research project will be disseminated in multiple ways: by organizing an interdisciplinary conference symposium on the topic of unification of explanation, presenting at two philosophy conferences on the topics of analogical reasoning and the cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer, publishing one scientific paper and two philosophical papers in peer-reviewed journals, and delivering public lectures to undergraduate students, practicing scientists, and interested individuals.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.