Helen Doyle, Ph.D., the former Director of the Science Program at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, has joined the Hybrid Vigor Institute as Managing Director.

Doyle, who earned her doctoral degree in biological sciences from Columbia University, began her career at Packard in 1999 as a program officer. During her tenure as Director, which ended in 2002, she was responsible for developing and/or managing Packard's Interdisciplinary Science program, its highly regarded Sustainability Science program, the prestigious Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering Program for young scientists, and several higher education programs to increase diversity in the sciences, among others.

At its peak, under Doyle's direction, the Science Program was supported by a $45 million annual grants budget. In response to its declining endowment, the Packard Foundation recently merged its Conservation and Science Programs, phasing out some individual programs.

"We are thrilled to have found someone with Helen's formidable talents to move Hybrid Vigor into the next phase of its institutional and intellectual growth," said Denise Caruso, founder and Executive Director of Hybrid Vigor.

"The world-class quality of her work at Packard and her collaborative, innovative approach to solving complex problems has earned her great respect in the academic community, as well as in the agencies and institutions that support it, and the foundation world," Caruso said. "Her management skills, her vision and her long-standing passion and commitment to interdisciplinary science and education are well known to all who have had the good fortune to work with her."

Doyle joins Caruso and Diana Rhoten, Ph.D., Hybrid Vigor's Research Director, to help the San Francisco-based institute build capacity and continue its groundbreaking work on the study and practice of interdisciplinary research to solve complex problems.

"This is an exciting time to join an ambitious young organization like Hybrid Vigor and help guide its next stage of development. Hybrid Vigor's approach to addressing complex scientific and social problems is innovative and strategic and its work so far has been exemplary," said Doyle. "By circumventing traditional disciplinary barriers to collaboration, Hybrid Vigor has created an effective model to leverage the immense untapped resources of academia and industry. I believe this model can far more effectively direct these resources to meet emerging challenges in health and the environment, as well as other areas."

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Over the past three years, the Hybrid Vigor Institute has amassed an impressive list of accomplishments.

Started in 2000, the Institute's unique approach has attracted and won a broad base of financial support from government agencies, philanthropic foundations and private donors. It hosts a Board of Directors, Advisory Council, Editorial Board and individual Project Faculties whose collective expertise spans several institutional sectors, including finance, industry, public policy and a broad range of academic disciplines.

In January 2002, the Institute was awarded a National Science Foundation grant for a pilot study, conducted by Rhoten, of interdisciplinary networks and methods in several environmental research centers. This project -- apparently the largest investment the NSF has made to date to study the actual mechanisms and conditions that facilitate interdisciplinary research -- has been noted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, in speeches by NSF Director Rita Colwell, and in a recent announcement from the National Academies of Science.

The Institute, with Rhoten as investigator, is in the process of carrying forward the promising results of this work into a new, collaborative project that studies graduate education.

Also noteworthy is the first Hybrid Vigor Journal, jointly published in February 2002 by the Institute's Health Determinants and Earth Systems programs, called "Risk as Continuum: A Redefinition of Risk for Governing the Post-Genome World." Researched and written by Caruso, this interdisciplinary exploration won the Global Business Network's "Book of the Month" award in June 2002.

Subsequent research, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation's Global Inclusion program, prompted the Institute to coalesce a group of experts from many fields to conduct the first-ever analysis of the risks of genomics that incorporates social, economic, legal and public-policy implications, as well as science-based concerns. The faculty for this project, which spans disciplines from anthropology and public policy to economics, molecular biology and zoology, also includes two of the best-known risk analysts in the United States. The group will meet for the first time in San Francisco, in June 2003.

ABOUT THE HYBRID VIGOR INSTITUTE

The mission of the Hybrid Vigor is to encourage and facilitate the practice of interdisciplinary research. To do so, it creates the venues, and developing the methods and tools, to bring researchers in contact with important, relevant work outside their fields of expertise. Knowledge gained from this work can and will be broadly applied outside the academic environment to solving problems in government and the private sector.

Toward that end, the Institute specifically aims to:

* Determine the problems and research topics within its program areas that will most effectively yield to an interdisciplinary approach.

* Instigate the solution of these complex problems -- in health, the environment and human perception -- by actively seeking out and connecting researchers and their ideas via publications, working symposia and online collaborations funded through and produced by the Institute.

* Develop process measures and outcome metrics for interdisciplinary research to allow practitioners to gauge their success.

* Increase the practice of interdisciplinary research by studying, developing and promoting effective methods that are widely deployed in academia, government and the private sector.

* Address through research and education the misconceptions and institutional and personal barriers that hinder interdisciplinary practices in academia and beyond

* Pave the way to provide the next generation of researchers with a multi-dimensional education that includes interdisciplinary practice.

* Attract a global network of diverse thinkers to these new, inclusive methods of problem solving and inquiry who meet the highest standards of professional performance in their respective disciplines.

For more information, please contact Denise Caruso or Helen Doyle at the Hybrid Vigor Institute, +1 415 543-8113. Alternatively, Caruso can be reached by email at mailto:caruso@hybridvigor.org. Doyle can be reached at mailto:doyle@hybridvigor.org.