“‘The new biologist’ is not a scientist who knows a little bit about all disciplines, but a scientist with deep knowledge in one discipline and a ‘working fluency’ in several.”
A report released today by the National Research Council “calls on the United States to launch a new multiagency, multiyear, and multidisciplinary initiative to capitalize on the extraordinary advances recently made in biology and to accelerate new breakthroughs that could solve some of society’s most pressing problems — particularly in the areas of food, environment, energy, and health.”
The release noted that recent advances in technology call for an approach that brings together physicists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and other scientists to create a “new biology” research community that can tackle society’s big problems, such as:
- Food security: develop capacity to quickly adapt plants to new growing initiatives.
- Environmental: monitor ecosystems; repair damage
- Energy: speed development of alternatives to fossil fuels.
- Medicine: personalize treatments with a goal of providing “individually predictive surveillance and care.”
The authors note that “new biology” holds great potential to attract new talent to the field: people who want to use their talents to solve real problems, not just live in the lab. They also make explicit an underlying challenge: quantitative skills will be more important than ever.
The report was requested by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and U.S. Department of Energy. Read the release here.
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