There are many active interdisciplinary activities and collaborations going on at any one time. Some of these activities are curricular, such as developing an interdisciplinary course, program or speaker series, while others are research-oriented projects, e.g. data mining of economic data, or community oriented, such as the Economic Empowerment and Global Learning Project. The activities described in this website are just a sampling of the many ongoing collaborations.

Ongoing Interdisciplinary Activities

There are many interdisciplinary activities at Lafayette. Some are designed specifically for students, while others are intended for faculty. There are also many other activities that involve all members of the Lafayette community and some of them include members of the Easton community.

Below is a partial list of some interdisciplinary events:

Interdisciplinary Faculty Forums

Issues and Approaches to Teaching Interdisciplinary Courses
Panelists: Jennifer Kelly (music), Jenn Rossmann (mechanical engineering), Dru Germanoski (geology & environmental geosciences)

Past topics:

  • Working With Students on ID Projects
    Panelists: David Veshosky (civil engineering), Rob Root (mathematics), Chris Ruebeck (economics)
  • Creating an ID Program
    Panelists: Andy Smith (English/film & media studies), Robin Rinehart (religious studies/Asian studies), Bob Kurt (biology/life science)

Interdisciplinary Seminar Series in Life Science

Title: Nanoscience for Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Heritage
Speaker: Piero Baglioni, Department of Chemistry and CSGI, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

Past events:

  • Nanobiotechnology – Approaching Biology from the Nano Scale
    Speaker: Nathaniel C. Cady (College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, University of Albany)
  • Tiny Solutions to Big Problems: Seeing and Controlling Immunity with Nanotechnology
    Speaker: Tarek Fahmy (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University)
  • Title: Cellular Mechanics in Vascular Form and Function
    Speaker: Cynthia Reinhart King (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University)

Interdisciplinary student speaker series

Sustainability and Capital Projects: Modeling the Emergent Property of Total Cost of Ownership
Presenters: Peter Mara ’11 and Abseen Anya ’11

Previous talks:

  • Semantic Network Generation From Human Input
    Aaron Springut ’12 and Samuel Courtney ’12
  • Wearable Instrumentation System for the Study of Finger-Object Contact
    Zhaoxin Yin (electrical and computer engineering)
  • Modeling Respiratory Flow Dynamics
    Alicia Clark ’11 (mechanical engineering)
  • A Mathematical Perspective: How male fecundity affects the optimal gametocyte sex ratio of Plasmodium falciparum during incomplete fertilization
    Miao Wang ’12
  • Data Visualization and Decision Support System for Economic, Policy Studies, and Similar Time Series Researchers
    Kumera Bekele ’13 (computer science) and Maytee Chinavanichkit ’12 (computer science)
  • Engineering for Service
    Gabriela Lachapel, Joelle Neilson, Dan Moran & Michael Trejo, Alex Rivera, Diana Enamorado, Carmen Martinez & Fernando Zuniga
  • Using GIS and Agent-Based Modeling to Simulate the Inter-firm Shipping Pallet Supply Chain
    Laura Wong ’12 (math/economics) and Phuong Anh Nguyen ’12 (international economics)
  • Computer-Based Music Composition
    Haruki Yamaguchi ’11 (computer science)

Interdisciplinary Collaborations (Faculty)

  • Agent-Based Modeling for Life Cycle Analysis – Jeff Pfaffmann, Chris Ruebeck, Kristen Sanford-Barnhardt
  • Data Mining of Economic/Political Datasets – Katalin Fabian, Chun Wai Liew
  • Art & Neuroscience – Ed Kerns, Elaine Reynolds
  • Biology & Modeling – Bob Kurt, Chun Wai Liew
  • Computation, Vision, Emergence – Ed Kerns, Chun Wai Liew, Jim Toia
  • Empowerment – Ed Kerns, David Veshosky
  • Evolutionary Game Theory – Rob Root, Chris Ruebeck
  • Interdisciplinary Forum – Mary Armstrong, Chun Wai Liew
  • Life Science Seminar Series- James Ferri, Steve Mylon
  • Modeling of Fish Locomotion – Chun Wai Liew, Rob Root
  • Perception of Music – Lisa Gabel, Jennifer Kelly
  • Visualization of Fluid Flow – Jenn Rossmann, Kirina Skivirsky

Projects

There are many research and curricular collaborations among faculty members from different departments, some of which are listed below:

  • Interdisciplinary Forum – Mary Armstrong, Chun Wai Liew
  • Life Science Seminar Series – James Ferri, Steve Mylon
  • Data Mining of Economic/Political Datasets – Katalin Fabian, Chun Wai Liew
  • Perception of Music – Lisa Gabel, Jeniffer Kelly
  • Agent-Based Modeling for Life Cycle Analysis – Jeff Pfaffmann, Chris Ruebeck, Kristen Sanford-Bernhardt
  • Computation, Vision, Emergence – Ed Kerns, Chun Wai Liew, Jim Toia
  • Art & Neuroscience – Ed Kerns, Elaine Reynolds
  • A Modeling-Based Approach To Biology – Bob Kurt, Chun Wai Liew
  • Modeling of Fish Locomotion – Chun Wai Liew, Rob Root
  • Evolutionary Game Theory – Rob Root, Chris Ruebeck
  • Visualization of Fluid Flow – Jenn Rossmann, Kirina Skvirsky

Some college-wide, multi-disciplinary technological projects involve students and faculty from multiple departments, including: