Milton Lee
Emeritus Professor of Analytical Chemistry, Brigham Young University; Chief Technology Officer, Axcend; USA
A problem interdisciplinarians should tackle? Throughout most of my career, I’ve been involved in designing new capillary column technologies for analytical chromatography, as well as designing instrumentation to achieve the greatest performance from these columns. When approaching column technology, it has been extremely fruitful and essential to work closely with synthetic organic and inorganic chemists to achieve the desired results. By collaborating with some of the best industrial minds in column manufacturing, we’ve developed innovative column treatments and stationary phase compositions. Interdisciplinary work has made my work very rewarding on a scientific and personal level.
The secret to a successful interdisciplinary collaboration?A variety of ingredients contribute to successful collaborations. It is key to remember that addressing a problem with input from others is often more productive than relying on one viewpoint. Working with scientists from various backgrounds with complementary knowledge and experience will boost your productivity. While working with your colleagues, it is important to listen and give serious consideration to all contributors. By acknowledging and praising the work of your colleagues, you’re more likely to reach a positive outcome – some research projects may develop into further collaborations or close friendships.
Fostering interdisciplinary working?More professional encouragement and recognition for interdisciplinary efforts would incentivize collaborative work. We could achieve this by valuing well-designed collaborations more for research grant proposals – increasing the number of awards for collaborative teams rather than individuals. Most scientific achievements are accomplished with team efforts and we should reflect this in our support across the field.
Most exciting development or trend??I’m most excited by the efforts to make analytical instrumentation greener, smaller, and easier to operate, and integrating sample preparation techniques into analytical measurement instrumentation. By encouraging the development of affordable, dedicated analyzers, we can progress with the most important emerging problems of modern society.
