Interdisciplinary science is a global imperative.

These words closed our 2025 Interdisciplinary Science Forum, a conference that convened leading institutions from across the world to explore the evolving research cultures, structures, strategies, and incentives making boundary-breaking science possible.

The Forum, in Washington, DC, was held in parallel to the publication of the 2026 Times Higher Education Interdisciplinary Science Rankings, in association with Schmidt Science Fellows.

MIT held the #1 position in the Rankings for the second consecutive year.

Speaking at the Forum’s closing dinner, MIT’s Vice President for Energy and Climate Professor Evelyn Wang told delegates the defining problems of our time did not stay neatly within disciplinary lanes, and the Ranking initiative was underpinning interdisciplinary progress.

“By measuring interdisciplinarity, these Rankings encourage universities to rethink how they organize discovery, how they support collaboration, and how they create environments where the next generation of scientists can thrive,” she said.

Prof. Wang spoke of the Institute’s rich and deliberate interdisciplinary culture, and she added advancing interdisciplinarity was about expanding what is possible.

“It is a global imperative.  We need ecosystems across universities, national labs, companies, governments, and communities that accelerate the movement of ideas across boundaries and out into the world,” she said.

Schmidt Science Fellows Co-Founder Wendy Schmidt told delegates they were investing in the future of science.

She added: “The promise of interdisciplinary science is that it enables us to reach beyond the boundaries of any particular discipline or expertise and to connect with an entirely new perspective.

“This can change the very kinds of questions we ask as well as the answers we discover”.

Jointly organised by Times Higher Education and Schmidt Science Fellows, the Interdisciplinary Science Forum brought together influential international research leaders to discuss the “how” of interdisciplinary science.

Throughout the day, panel discussions included scaling interdisciplinary initiatives, building institutional culture, utilizing emerging technologies to bridge across disciplines, career progression, and creating interdisciplinary incentives.

Institutions across North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa were represented on the panels to deliver a global perspective on change.

Keynote speaker Professor Katherine Yelick, Vice-Chancellor of Research at the University of California, Berkeley, said the quest for interdisciplinarity was not artificially created, it was about maximizing research impact.

She said the institution’s recent Nobel success stories had been aided by an interdisciplinary mindset.

Schmidt Science Fellows Executive Director Megan Kenna and University of California, San Francisco’s Vice Chancellor for Research, Professor Harold Collard, rounded out the program with a deep dive into building an interdisciplinary future.

Dr. Kenna said: “The Forum explored what it takes for universities to create environments where interdisciplinary science can thrive.  Where it is expected and supported”.

These institutions are not simply reorganizing structures. They are reimagining how to support science that moves at the pace of the world’s challenges and strives to get ahead of them – Dr. Megan Kenna

“Environments where scientists are encouraged to connect ideas rather than protect them and where bold thinking becomes the norm.”

She added: “We also want to honor the universities participating in the 2026 Interdisciplinary Science Rankings.

“These institutions are not simply reorganizing structures. They are reimagining how to support science that moves at the pace of the world’s challenges and strives to get ahead of them”.

Schmidt Sciences President Stu Feldman had set the tone for the day, telling delegates that research support models were being rethought and posed the question: “How can we do better science and better education by softening boundaries?

“How do we think about the evolution of disciplines and the evolution of how we do science?”

Times Higher Education’s Global Chief Affairs Officer Phil Baty said the Rankings and Forum, now in their second year, were having a remarkable impact on the sector: “This is about measurement into momentum, and momentum into impact”.

He added: “We have never seen such a rapid global embrace of a new measurement tool”.

And he added the Forum was building on that global momentum: “It is a pleasure to welcome leaders from around the world, united by a shared belief.

“A shared commitment and determination to champion and fuel interdisciplinary science”.

Photos: Claudine Gossett