Interdisciplinary Events

Conferences, Clinics, and Courses

The Work Science Institute has been known for innovative conferences, clinics, and courses since its founding, and WSI's offerings include:

  • The Work of Research, in which groups of Principal Investigators (and, often, groups of Department Chairs and Deans) come together in a small working group, learning together about a suite of twelve innovations that can be implemented in their labs and departments; working together on practical aspects of implementation; and discussing together practical challenges in 21st-century research and sharing and developing approaches to these challenges.

  • Work Meets Life: Work in Living Systems, brings together university and private-sector participants for a collaborative event combining intellectual stimulation, development of cross-disciplinary research topics, and practical applications to knowledge-based work. Two Work Meets Life international small-group working conferences were held on the integrative study of work in living systems, as part of the initial development of the Work Meets Life project, and many participants celebrated the events as the most intense intellectual atmosphere of their lives.

  • Mathematical-Biological Collaboration, brings mathematicians and biologists together, with these hallmarks: Our aim is to bring together mathematicians who do not usually collaborate with biologists, and vice versa; we aim to preserve the full messiness and grandeur of real biological problems, not idealized ones; and we aim for mathematicians to be engaged as valuable biological collaborators, not as calculators. Researchers from other areas who are interested in a practical approach to innovative research collaboration are welcome, too.

In addition:

  • The participants and content from several previous Interdisciplinary Research Events have been brought together into collaborative conference, "Expanding Perspectives on Work and Performance."

  • An Interdisciplinary Research Event that has previously received an international award, "The Work of Energy and Resource Allocation: In Cellular, Neural, and Manufactured Systems," is in development.

If you are interested in any of these offerings, or have a topic you would like to develop into an Interdisciplinary Research Event, for more information, please write: events@workscienceinstitute.org.