Students, Patents, Ignorance Help Science Cross Borders

BOSTON – Cross-disciplinary research is all the rage these days, for good reason. "It's widely agreed that creativity and innovation are combinatorial processes," Sarah Kaplan of the University of Toronto told the audience at the panel on "Confluence of Streams of Knowledge: Biotechnology and Nanotechnology" at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in February. "Ideas ignore boundaries," including the boundaries of academic disciplines.