From GenAI workshops and entrepreneurial pitch labs to fireside chats with leading thinkers and an interactive science showcase, the Summit created a space for discovering, sharing, and engaging with the latest research and with the people pushing beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.

We were delighted to welcome our Co-Founder, Wendy Schmidt, to share in the event, and she offered a beautiful reflection on what makes this community so powerful.

“We can look around and see a planned gathering of scientists from different disciplines seeking to solve problems in science by finding ways to work together,” she said.

“From another perspective, though, the way I see it, all of us are a single fabric, woven together from different kinds of fibers, spun from different experiences, insights, and learning, and forming a whole cloth which, together, we continue to weave.”

The Summit featured more than 35 keynotes, panels, workshops, tours, and networking sessions with more than 90 speakers.

It explored big themes from environments for high-impact interdisciplinary research to developing researchers equipped to tackle 21st-century challenges and gave a platform to the latest research through compelling talks and more than 50 science poster presentations.

Opening the Summit’s Showcase Evening, our Executive Director Dr. Megan Kenna detailed the importance of interdisciplinary thinking to today’s science and future breakthroughs.

“Disciplines give us rigor. They give us a common language, and they allow us to go deep. But if we’re not careful, they can also become invisible fences.

“Fences that nature never built, but we did.

“Because cancer doesn’t recognize the boundary between biology and engineering.

“The changing climate doesn’t distinguish between atmospheric science, economics, and public policy.

“The human brain doesn’t care where neuroscience ends and computer science begins.

“The world’s biggest questions don’t recognize the boundaries we have created. So, neither can the scientists who hope to solve them.

“The breakthroughs that will define the future won’t come from abandoning disciplines. They’ll come from bringing disciplines together.”

Dr. Kenna also thanked Duke for its generosity and partnership in hosting the Summit.

To demonstrate the power of this approach, the Summit’s Showcase Evening culminated with four remarkable stories of curiosity, connection, and creativity.

From AI-powered ecology and the mathematics of public policy, to next-generation neuroimaging for mental health and bioengineered buildings, our main stage speakers demonstrated the power, purpose, and possibility of interdisciplinary science.

Across the curated networking space, eight interactive installations highlighted projects and Fellows supported by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, sparking conversations that crossed disciplines and inspired new ideas.

Schmidt Sciences President and Chief Scientist Stu Feldman described the Summit as a celebration of interdisciplinary research and added:  “Interdisciplinary thinking is critical to the future of science.”

Delegates also stepped beyond the conference venues to experience interdisciplinary research in action, including tours of the Duke Data+ and Code+ programs, the Edible Atlas project, the Duke Plant Growth Facilities, the Suthana and McIntyre Labs spanning neuroscience, engineering, and clinical medicine, the Duke Lemur Center, and the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL).

Together, these visits showcased the remarkable breadth of research taking place across Duke University and the wider Research Triangle.

Closing the Showcase Evening, Duke’s Vice-President and Vice-Provost for Climate and Sustainability Toddi Steelman captured the spirit of the Summit.

She said: “What strikes me is this gathering, is not just about interdisciplinary science, it’s about changing how science actually gets done.”

The Interdisciplinary Science Summit was a true celebration of interdisciplinary thinking and a reminder that when we create spaces for curiosity and collaboration, we are seeding new discoveries that no single discipline could achieve alone.