Multiskill Research

Crossdisciplinary research plays a major role in addressing many problems of intellectual and societal importance. We describe a framework to characterize such projects that replaces "discipline "by "intellectual skills." We applied this framework to study 40 National Science Foundation-sponsored projects. We found that the intellectual skills varied widely among projects in depth, range, andform. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, we found that many academic departments were "open" to broad ranging skill acquisition and use. Unfortunately our evidence found NSF peer review processes unfavorably disposed to multiskill projects. Lastly, we discuss various approaches to organizing and practicing such research.