Changes Needed to Educate New Breed of Scientists

Universities and the scientific community must rethink the way they educate scientists if they want to effectively explore new areas in biology.

That's the argument Florida State University mathematics professor De Witt Sumners and several colleagues at research institutions across the country are making in an article published in the Sept. 12 issue of the journal Science.

In "Educating a New Breed of Scientists," Sumners and nine other researchers say that students and fellows in the physical, computational or mathematical sciences must be educated to tackle biological questions. But departmental boundaries in universities and traditional ways of funding research have presented obstacles for cross-training students.

"Biology is the science of the 21st century," said Sumners, who is also a Robert O. Lawton distinguished professor and chair of the math department at FSU. "With the sequencing of the human genome, there is an enormous amount of data that needs to be analyzed. In order to understand data, you need a mathematical model."

While some universities have embraced the idea in the last decade, true interdisciplinary programs are still rare, Sumners said. Some universities are resistant to change while others are not sure how to do it.

"Forward-looking universities are investing in a computational approach to biology," Sumners said. "Good universities are now doing computation and experiments in the same lab. This is the wave of the future."

One of the success stories cited in the Science article is the Program in Mathematics and Molecular Biology (PMMB), a multi-university national research and training consortium based at FSU. Started in 1987, the consortium gives financial support to 18 scientists at 11 institutions across the country who are looking at new ways to approach structural biology, statistical genetics and DNA structure and function, according to Sumners, co-director of the PMMB.

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund began funding the program in 1997 as part of an effort to encourage cross-training.

In addition, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund is now requiring students and postdoctoral fellows doing research to have two mentors - one from the quantitative sciences and one from the biological sciences - before receiving financial support. BWF found that the active involvement of faculty members from different disciplines contributes to institutional change because the collaboration often continues after the trainee's tenure.

"Our intent is not to turn all scientists into biologists but rather to encourage development of new directions in physics and mathematics based on the increasingly rich data emerging in biology," the authors write. "To move beyond merely supplying 'technical help' to biologists, we believe that physical, theoretical and computational scientists will need to immerse themselves in biology. Otherwise, they will not be prepared to distinguish important questions from trivial ones."

The biotechnology industry and drug companies in particular are in need of scientists who are cross-trained in biology and math or statistics, Sumners said.

The authors conclude that significant cultural changes are needed among scientists, academic departments, research institutions and federal funding agencies if burgeoning scientific opportunities in biology are to be tackled by a well-prepared cadre of young scientists from all disciplines.