Description

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Biological and biomedical sciences are becoming more interdisciplinary, and scientists of the future need inte rdisciplinary training instead of the conventional disciplinary training. Just as Sean Eddy (2005) wiselypointed out that sending monolingual diplomats to the United Nations maynot enhance international collaborations, combining strictly disciplinary scientists trained in either mathematics, computational science or molecular biology will not create a productive inte rdisciplinary team ready to solve interdisciplinary problems. Molecular biology is an interdiscip linary science back in its heyday, and founders of molecular biology were ofte n interdisciplinary scientists. Indeed, Francis Crick considered himself as "a mixture of crystallographer, biophysicist, biochemist, and geneticist" (Crick, 1965). Because it was too cumbersome to explain to people that he was such a mixture, the term "molecular biologist" came handy. To get the crystallographer, biophysicist, biochemist, and geneticist within hi mself to collaborate with each other probably worked better than a team with a crystallographer, a biophysicist, a biochemist and a geneticist who maynot even be interested in each other's problems.

About the Author

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Dr. Xuhua Xia obtained his PhD in population biology at University of Western Ontario in 1990 and made his entry into molecular evolution and phylogenetics at University of Washington in 1993. He was recruited by University of Hong Kong in 1996 as an assistant professor, and served as a senior scientist and the founding head of the Bioinformatics Laboratory of HKU-Pasteur Research Centre. Dr. Xia joined University of Ottawa in 2002 where he is cross-appointed to both Biology Department and the School of Information Technology Engineering. He is an active member in the Center for Advanced Research in Environmental Genomics and the Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology. His web site is at http: //dambe.bio.uottawa.ca.