Yesterday I participated in a very interesting discussion at the Deans and Directors group about how we talk about research here at George Mason. One interesting idea was the notion of creating compelling narratives for the research that goes on at the University. The idea is to relate different threads of Mason research so that they integrate with one another to form a coherent whole.
Example: Mason has a a very strong cancer biology research program along side its neurosciences focus (the one I write so much about in this blog). How might those two strengths be integrated in one story?
A cell biology professor of mine at the University of Michigan used to say (tongue-in-cheek) that when we really understand the process of learning and memory (in the brain) it’ll turn to be a more regulated form of cancer.
She was way ahead of her time!
She was referring of course to the fact that cancer cells (like neurons) are remarkably plastic. As cancer cells metastasize they round up and loosen their grip on their surrounding substrate. This physical change can be thought of as a kind of cellular plasticity. Similarly, even into adulthood, neurons have the ability to change their physical shape as the brain “rewires” in response to stimuli from the external environment. Turns out that the molecules subserving these changes (both in cancer cells and in neurons) are often he same shady characters. One of them (protein kinase C) was originally discovered in the context of cancer, but actually has turned out to be of tremendous importance in brain learning and memory!
So the above narrative is an example of how one can weave together two different research stories (from quite different fields) into a coherent narrative. The cancer cells and the neurons are linked together in their molecular processes.
It’s possible to do this for many fields of research. At Krasnow, with our research programs covering neuroscience, cognitive psychology and computer sciences, this is especially important.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 