A lengthy piece on interdisciplinary research in the June 14th issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education ("U.S. Agencies Look to Interdisciplinary Science") cites Hybrid Vigor's NSF-funded research on interdisciplinary networks and methods as "one of the most detailed looks ever at how such studies work." It quotes at length HV's research director (and principal investigator for the study), Diana Rhoten, Ph.D., on the benefits and barriers to conducting such boundary-crossing research.

The article also cites Hybrid Vigor Director Thomas Kalil, former advisor to the Clinton administration, now Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Science and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley, as well as Hybrid Vigor Advisory Council member Richard Zare, Ph,.D., distinguished Stanford chemistry professor, co-founder of the Bio-X program at Stanford and former chair of National Science Board.

The article can be accessed (subscription required, sorry about that) here.

Hybrid Vigor's Rhoten was also quoted in a recent speech by Rita Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation. The speech, entitled "NSF's Investment in Converging Frontiers," was delivered to a standing room only audience at the dedication of the Center for Adaptive Optics, a new NSF-funded Science & Technology center at the University of California at Santa Cruz on June 21.

The full text of the speech (as prepared for delivery) is not yet posted on the NSF website. For a copy, please send request to Hybrid Vigor headquarters.

The issue of WIRED Magazine now on the newsstand (August 2002) contains a commissioned opinion piece on bioethics -- "The Moral Minority" -- written by Hybrid Vigor's founder and executive director, Denise Caruso.

"It was no less a scientific superstar than James Watson himself - cofounder of the US's Human Genome Project and Nobel discoverer of DNA - who imbued the amorphous field of bioethics with the political and moral suasion it commands today," Caruso writes. "He did so in the time-honored way: by throwing money at it." How can any one group of people possibly be expected to shoulder such responsibility? she asks.

How indeed? Click here to read more.

"Risk as Continuum: A Redefinition of Risk for Governing the Post-Genome World," the acclaimed Hybrid Vigor Journal which further explores these issues, is available at hybridvigor.net. Click here for PDF.

The concept behind "Open Source Biology," a term coined in 1999 by researchers at the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley (whose director, Roger Brent, is a Hybrid Vigor director), is the subject of fascinating article in the July/August 2002 issue of the Washington Monthly. ("Open Source Biology" is also discussed in the 'Risk as Continuum' journal mentioned in previous item.)

Written by Nicholas Thompson, a Markle Fellow at the New America Foundation, the article is entitled, "May the Source Be With You: Can a band of biologists who share data freely out-innovate the corporate researchers who hoard it?"

Good question. Read about it here, and find out more about the Molecular Sciences Institute here.