Dr Hazri bin Haji Kifle, Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Brunei Darussalam, asked the panel to elaborate on how they promote interdisciplinary research within their institutions as interdisciplinarity is often framed as a catalyst to new discoveries and inventions. At Makerere University, Professor Nawangwe shared that interdisciplinary research is now mandatory. If scholars want access to the university’s funds from government, their projects need to involve at least three people from another faculty. At HKUST, Professor Ip said interdisciplinary research is the norm and they had recently created an Academy of Interdisciplinary Studies to work with faculties from different schools in identifying emerging areas and global challenges that they can collaborate on, such as sustainability. The university also provides funding support for interdisciplinary research, such as fintech and green finance. “We also recently established a campus in Guangzhou on the Chinese Mainland that does not have single disciplines, it is all interdisciplinary. This is another way that
we can create an environment and platform for colleagues to work together to address global challenges,” she added. One of her predecessors at HKUST, Professor Tony Chan, who is now President of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, noted that when his university was established 14 years ago, it was decided there would be no departments in order to break down barriers and foster interdisciplinarity. Dr Khosla shared that UC San Diego had adopted similar strategies to HKUST and interdisciplinarity is a norm, with faculty being hired in ways that will enable UC San Diego to continue to define new areas of research. The university ploughed new ground years ago in establishing departments on cognitive science and nanotechnology. To maintain that edge, he has allotted 20 faculty positions each year in which each position can be shared between two faculties. The central university pays half the salary and the departments pay a quarter each – a bargain for the departments. “These positions always get oversubscribed. It’s amazing that when you do that, new areas of research just emerge in ways you had not imagined,” he said.
We as higher education leaders really need to shape our universities as hubs to not only support academic research, but also drive innovation and help our colleagues actualise their research findings.
Professor Nancy Y Ip President, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
mitigate the risk, and finally to actually execute their plans. This is the exact definition of an innovator and entrepreneur,” he remarked. While entrepreneurialism was to be encouraged, Dr Khosla also cautioned that it was not a fruitful path for universities to seek to profit from academic research. The US invests US$40 billion in research but the return on investment in terms of royalty income is only about one per cent, he said. “If you think you are going to make money doing IP transfer, you are hallucinating,” he added. Professor Metin Sitti, President of Koç University, also noted the difficulty of going from paper to product. “Innovation and creating deep-tech start-ups out of advanced research is highly challenging,” he commented. Culture is a factor – the fear of failure and loss of face were concerns in places like Türkiye and Germany, where he worked previously, and Asia. But ultimately, innovations need to start with knowledge and discoveries, he said. Universities and funding bodies should not forget the importance of fundamental research.
“For many reasons, not least because they are supported by taxpayers’ money, funding agencies are pushing us to do translational research that makes a great impact in society. But we are missing a very important point. Fundamental research enables long-term, high-risk topics that can have more drastic impact in science and society. We should not give up on fundamental research, whose major outcome measure is still publications,” he added. Nonetheless, Koç University has also embraced innovation and translation of research. It works closely with industry, which provides innovation support, and has seen students embrace entrepreneurship. About 10 per cent of the graduates create their own start-ups and jobs on the back of interdisciplinary programmes that allow them to do double majors in business and their chosen discipline. The university also offers fellowships and support to PhD students that accommodate the creation of start-ups. The panel discussion prompted questions from the audience of university presidents on how to develop innovation more broadly and its impact on the way that scholarship is defined.
My mandate to them is to understand how to identify opportunities, to look at the risks in those opportunities, to plan on how to execute those opportunities and mitigate the risk, and finally to actually execute their plans. This is the exact definition of an innovator and entrepreneur.
Dr Pradeep K Khosla Chancellor, University of California, San Diego
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