Interdisciplinary Research Institutes Free
your Time and your Mind!

George M. Slavich, Ph.D.
University of California, San Francisco

The Clinical Psychologist

Recently, I was reminded of my alma mater’s motto, “The Winds of Freedom Blow.” Rarely, however, is academic life – and particularly early career academic life – so free. Our time and ability to think freely is constrained constantly by practical demands and conceptual boundaries, as both tangible factors (e.g., program requirements, committee assignments, funding agency priorities) and less tangible factors (e.g., traditional definitions of what "psychologists" study) influence what we research and when.

Enter interdisciplinary research institutes: Scientific sanctuaries where researchers are free from the demands of typical university life, and where the boundaries of traditional academic departments and domains do not apply. Often, such institutes also offer very unique training opportunities for graduate and early career psychologists. Below, I review four such institutes, but this is by no means a complete list. Have fun finding one that suits your interests!

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences

Description: Located in Stanford, California, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) is dedicated to advancing knowledge about human behavior and fostering contributions to society. Its primary mission is to "improve contributions of the social and behavioral sciences and humanities by facilitating interdisciplinary perspectives, depth of inquiry, integration of knowledge, and application to real world concerns." It aims to do this by attracting a "rich mix of scholars from disciplines and interdisciplinary areas in the humanities and the social and behavioral sciences that span art and economics, law and neuroscience, business and women’s studies, architecture and medicine, communication and biology."

Opportunities: Senior scientists spend at CASBS primarily through its residential fellows program. However, CASBS also sponsors three other types of programs: special projects, extended seminars, and summer institutes. Early career scholars who have just received tenure can be invited to participate in a summer institute, during which time they are encouraged to "think more ambitiously about their work and to take greater intellectual risks" than they may have been able to do prior to receiving tenure. Topics for recent summer institutes have included Contentious Politics, Emotion and Decision, and Economy and Society: Trajectories of Capitalism.

Application and Contact: The fellowship application process opens in January and closes in June of each year. To apply online, go to: http://www.casbs.org/apply. For more information about CASBS, call 650-321-2052 or email secretary@casbs.org.

Website: http://www.casbs.org

School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study

Description: Located in Princeton, New Jersey, the School of Social Science (SSS) at the Institute for Advanced Study takes as its mission "the analysis of societies and social change." It aims to do this through a "multidisciplinary, comparative and international approach to social research." A goal of the SSS is the training of young scholars by senior scholars whose reputations are already well established. Junior and senior scholars alike are drawn from a very broad range of fields that include political science, economics, law, psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, and literary criticism.

Opportunities: Membership at both the junior and senior scientist levels is granted to approximately fifteen scholars each year. These individuals are expected to pursue only their own research, although the SSS organizes a weekly seminar at which members and invited guests present their ongoing work, providing "a space for intellectual debate and cross-fertilization to flourish." A theme is designated for each year, but only about one-third of scholars pursue work relating directly to the theme. Recent themes have included The ‘Third World’ Now, Psychology and Economics, and Interdisciplinarity and Its Objects.

Application and Contact: The fellowship application process opens on June 1st and closes on November 15th of each year. To apply online, go to: https://applications.ias.edu/login.php. For more information about the SSS, call 609-734-8250.

Website: http://www.ias.edu

Janelia Farm

Description: Located in Ashburn, Virginia, Janelia Farm is an “advanced research center that… serves as an intellectual hub for up to several hundred scientists from diverse disciplines” including chemistry, biochemistry, neurobiology, genetics, physics, computer science, math, engineering, and biology. The mission of Janelia Farm is to offer scientists "the freedom and flexibility [needed] to push the bounds of knowledge in some of the most important areas of biomedical research." It aims to do this by helping its residential and visiting scholars to “work together in multidisciplinary teams to solve challenging biological problems that are difficult to address in existing research settings."

Opportunities: Resident scientist applications are accepted for 5-year appointments. These fellows are "independent scientists with resources provided for a laboratory of up to two additional members (e.g., postdoctoral fellows or graduate students)." Early career professionals may work as a resident scientist or as a post-doctoral associate in the lab of a Janelia Farm resident scientist. These latter appointments are reviewed annually and may be renewed up to four times (i.e., for a maximum of five years in residence). In addition to these two types of positions, Janelia Farm continually hosts visiting scientists.

Application and Contact: The next deadline for resident scientist positions is January 15, 2008. Go to: http://www.hhmi.org/janelia/positions.html. Those interested in a post-doctoral position should contact directly the lab head with whom they want to work. For a list of openings, go to: http://www.hhmi.org/janelia/positions_postdoc.html. Visiting scientist applications are accepted on a continuous basis. Go to: http://www.hhmi.org/janelia/visiting.html. For more information, call 571-209-4000.

Website: http://www.hhmi.org/janelia

Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences

Description: Located in Split, Croatia, the Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences (MedILS) is an international renaissance project, inspired in part by the Florence Academy of Medicis. It is “setup as a scientific, social, and even political experiment.” Its primary mission is to “create a new original scientific culture in the studies of life and its manifestations, by implementing the world’s highest standards of scientific work, style, and ethics.” It aims to do this by breeding “a specially trained generation of young scientists: creative, multidisciplinary professionals trained to think the unthinkable and do experiments about it.”

Opportunities: Students and early career professionals can participate in multidisciplinary workshops that include participants from biology, computer science, bioinformatics, psychology, and related fields. Workshop topics vary annually. The program for this past summer included workshops on “surviving death” (an interdisciplinary discussion of natural selection) and on developing interdisciplinary research projects. It also included a four-day symposium on brain imaging and on the simulation of human brain activity. Occasionally, there are also opportunities to pursue time-limited (i.e., one month to one year) independent writing and research projects at MedILS on topics of an individual scientist’s choosing.

Application and Contact: Workshop applications are due in June of each year. To apply online, go to: http://www.medils.org/index.php/archives/category/events/schools-workshops. To discuss independent research project opportunities, contact George Slavich at gslavich at mednet.ucla.edu. For more information about MedILS, call +385-21-555-600 or email medils@medils.hr.

Website: http://www.medils.hr

George M. Slavich, Ph.D. :: Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology
UCLA Medical Center Plaza 300, Rm 3156 :: Los Angeles, CA 90095-7076
+1 310-825-2576 :: gslavich at mednet.ucla.edu