The goal of the project is to create new avenues of interdisciplinary collaboration among students in the natural, social, and mathematical sciences through instruction in advanced computerized methods of data acquisition, analysis, and modeling. The project involves the departments of Biology, Mathematical Sciences, Physics and Chemistry, Psychology, and Social Sciences, and emphasizes computer-based research methods common to these departments.A common laboratory will house a network of Macintosh computers, software, and associated data acquisition boards including three powerful and versatile software packages, LabVIEW, STELLA II, and SYSTAT. Students will be introduced to the technology in an interdisciplinary laboratory course, "Computers in the Sciences". Skills and knowledge gained in this setting will be applied in various disciplinary laboratories, for which numerous experiments and exercises have already been designed and trial-tested in courses as diverse as Principles of Macroeconomics, Personality, and Neurobiology. Senior students will use these computing tools in their thesis projects, which will be presented in a new interdisciplinary seminar.We seek to generate an atmosphere of interdisciplinary collaboration using new laboratory technologies which students are likely to use in both graduate research and work settings. Students will be prepared to take their places in both basic and applied research projects which require an interdisciplinary perspective.
