“The terms for the different disciplines are imaginary. They’re made up by people. They never made any sense. They never will make any sense. The problems that we need to solve, both intellectual problems, like what is life, and practical problems, like how do you run a megacity of 50 million people? There’s no discipline that actually covers those subjects as a single subject. You advance by crossing boundaries, by bringing together fields. The real challenge is how to educate scientists to able to do this.” At the IRC, we achieve this by combining scientific research with the creativity and curiosity of the arts and humanities.
Harvard researcher Dr. George Whitesides, as quoted in Dome Explorer, Lee Boot’s IRC project with the National Academy of Sciences.
UMBC was established upon the land of the Piscataway Conoy and Susquehannock peoples. Over time, citizens of many more indigenous nations have come to reside in this region. We humbly offer our respects to all past, present, and future indigenous people connected to this place. While we recognize the importance of acknowledging those who came before us, we also know that truth-telling is only a small gesture, and we must take action towards the necessary work of repair.