Universities must adopt new measures and incentives to deliver on the promise of interdisciplinary research, sector leaders have said.

Michael Spence, vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, told the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit that his institution had introduced ¡°non-traditional¡± metrics for its multidisciplinary initiatives. He cited the Charles Perkins Centre, a six-year-old institute harnessing researchers in fields as diverse as medicine, biology, business, architecture and agriculture to tackle the related scourges of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

¡°We said the only metric was going to be the extent to which it changed Australian incidence rates and led to better forms of treatment,¡± Dr Spence told a breakout session at the summit, held at the National University of Singapore.

¡°It wasn¡¯t that we stopped counting Nature papers, [but] we created different internal incentives that were outward-focused. That¡¯s had a big cultural shift on the institute, and sort of made it more fun.

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¡°Interestingly, it¡¯s also meant that people are less tolerant of the person who does sod-all, because you¡¯ve got to be making some contribution. It¡¯s lifted our performance as well as had that cultural impact.¡±

Dr Spence added that when everybody in a research institute had the same expertise, things tended to become ¡°boring¡±.

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¡°You want to be in an environment where your cutting-edge work on artificial intelligence is being challenged by a political philosopher who is saying ¡®this is the end of civilisation¡¯, in a structure that encourages you to work together meaningfully,¡± he said. ¡°And you want to see your work make a difference.¡±

Fellow panellist Evelyn Welch, provost of King¡¯s College London, said that yardsticks made a difference in the higher education sector. ¡°You get what you measure,¡± Professor Welch said.

The sector had become ¡°acclimatised¡± to global rankings since Shanghai Jiao Tong University produced the first international league table in 2003, she explained. ¡°If we produced another set of rankings based on the immediate poverty levels around our campuses ¨C ranked all institutions based on the per capita income within a 15-mile [24km] radius, and said that was the way we were going to measure ourselves ¨C universities would move fast,¡± Professor Welch said.

When research funding was directed towards grand challenges, she added, interdisciplinary communities formed naturally. ¡°It¡¯s worth challenging the notion that universities are hidebound ivory towers. We respond very well to the right kinds of incentives that allow us to keep our curiosity going.¡±

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Pam Benoit, provost of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said that pressure for interdisciplinary work was coming from students as well as from research imperatives.

¡°You have to have strong disciplines, but you also have to give students the kinds of things they¡¯re interested in,¡± she told the forum.

Thiam Soon Tan, president of the Singapore Institute of Technology, said that ¡°real-world¡± issues ¨C in allied health, for example ¨C inevitably required input from different disciplines.

¡°We are beginning to work with the community hospitals, thinking about rehabilitative healthcare in the community. It doesn¡¯t take very long to realise that you need IT people, engineers ¨C even accountancy and finance people ¨C to come up with simple solutions,¡± he said.

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¡°When you start with a real problem, very soon the problem itself will lead different people together.¡±

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com