Forum:How do you define inter-disciplinary communication, how important are these skills in your job and how frequently do you use them?

Question

[alolex]

Bioinformatics is an inter-disciplinary discipline that requires knowledge of biology, computer science, statistics, mathematics, medicine and more. To me, inter-disciplinary communication does not just mean you can talk to a computational scientist or biological scientist, but it also means that you can listen to either side and translate the message from one to the other.

I came into bioinformatics from a pure computer science background. Learning all the biological terminology was one of the major hurdles I faced early in my career. I feel I was lucky to find an inter-disciplinary research group to work with, that contained computer scientists, mathematicians, physicist, biologists, immunologists and clinicians. I "grew up" professionally in this group and learned from the very start how to convey biological concepts to computationalists and computational concepts to biologist. For a long time I took these skill for granted, but then I moved away from that environment into different inter-disciplinary labs and I have found that these vital communication skills are lacking in other bioinformaticians. I've also started to come to the realization that bioinformatics has its own language so-to-speak that neither biologists nor computer scientist understand in the same way that we do, which can make the translation of concepts even more difficult.

I would like to ask the community if they have observed these same trends? How do you define inter-disciplinary communication? How important are these communication skills in your job and how frequently do you need to use them?

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UPDATE: Based on the feedback from my initial post I can see how my question was oddly phrased. I think I will try it from a different direction. Sometimes it is difficult for me to write down the ideas or questions in my head, and it takes me a few times to get it right. If it is still oddly phrased I can try again.

I think my question stemmed from wanting to know what other bioinformatician working environments are like. Yes, I agree that bioinformatics is a bridge between the computational and the biological--this is vital--but to me that also means we need to have a foot hold on both sides, and need to be communicating and collaborating with those that are not as familiar with inter-disciplinary research, otherwise we may become an island. When involved in collaborations that include scientists from both extremes I feel a bioinformatician sometime does need to act as a mediator--what I mean by that is 2 things: 1) knowing how to identify and communicate unstated assumptions by either party, and 2) knowing how to re-phrase a biological or clinical question into one that can be answered using computational techniques, and vice-versa (being able to aid biologists in interpreting results from computational analyses).

So I guess my question is what others think of the above? How do you define your role as a bioinformatician, and how often do you participate in research collaborations consisting of multiple diverse disciplines (which requires the communication skills mentioned in my initial post)?

[John]

I often say it, but Bioinformaticians are supposed to bridge the gap between Comp Sci and Biology - not act as a middle men.
But it will be a cold day in hell before a Biologist asks me how BLAST works, rather than just asking me to do it for them...

Answer 1

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

I use them all the time too

"Pierre, can you help me installing a printer driver on windows 7?"
"No, I can't because I'm just a biologist"

"Pierre, can you help me aliquoting 384 tubes?"
"No, I can't because I'm just an informatician"

Answer 2

[Istvan Albert]

Well the question is posed in somewhat strange way, it is asking "how often do you use your communication skills" - I use them all the time ;-).

I don't feel that I have to think about it or prepare for it specifically "I am now going to speak differently than I would with someone else" but I have learned to recognize terms that are likely meaningless for others. Mostly by experience though. I won't ask a life scientists: What is the insert size of your library? Instead I'll ask them about the fragment sizes that they prepared their samples for.

I also think that this is not necessarily something that is specific to bioinformatics but it is a more universal skill that applies equally across all disciplines. It is perhaps not that obvious when someone communicates ineffectively across or within other domains but the net effect may be the same.

[alolex]

Istvan,

Thank you for your comment that my original post was oddly phrased--I agree. I've tried to tackle it from a different direction. If I don't get it right the first time I always try to re-think and re-phrase.

Answer 3

[DG]

Well the exact mix of background areas differs as well. Remember, not all bioinformaticians are working on human genomics or clinical applications, although I would hazard we may now make up a substantial proportion. I did my undergrad in molecular, went and did a bioinformatics crash course in programming, and then did my PhD in a molecular evolution lab. My PhD lab was mixed with a lot of people who did wet lab culturing, sampling, etc but as genomics took off more people were doing more and more data analysis. Only a few of us worked exclusively with the bioinformatics portion, but a substantial number did a lot of boinformatics. In that lab the "intermediate" role rarely needed to be played, and then only when something dove into more complex computational or statistical waters.

I switched to human disease genomics in my post-doc and started working with exclusively wet lab biologists for pretty much the first time, and also with clinicians. So there even as a bioinformatician I was a specialist. So pitching and explaining what was going on to a very diverse group of people was key. Now I'm in a clinical scientist position. Translating bioinformatics to a pure clinical level can be a challenge but is always interesting.

[Zhilong Jia]

what qualities are necessary for clinic scientists? Or what is needed for a position as clinic scientists ? Thanks.

[DG]

Depends on where you are. Every jurisdiction has different requirements and regulations. For my position I didn't require any specific clinical certifications though.

[Zhilong Jia]

Sorry for my unclear expression. I actually mean what kind of knowledge is a must for a clinic scientists? Such as is there a large difference between clinic scientists and bioinformatics scientists. Thank you.

[DG]

A clinical scientists is just any scientists working in a clinical setting. So the necessary knowledge is the same, whatever your actual speciality is. This is not to be confused with a Clinician-Scientist which is usually someone with both an MD and a PhD. In my case I am a Bioinformatics Scientist working at a hospital, I perform my duties in support of clinical care for the Director of Molecular Diagnostics and work closely with other clinical scientists, pathologists, etc in order to ensure we are developing and offering NGS-based testing in a way that works for the clinicians. Primarily this is for the Pathologists as they are who are requesting the testing.

[Zhilong Jia]

Got it. It looks the SNP testing is another part based on your reply and Molecular Diagnostics, besides NGS-based testing. Thank you.