As a senior at Pitt, I have been exposed to a myriad of peers, both within and outside my home departments of economics and mathematics. In particular, I have had consistent contact with students entering the medical, biological, or chemical sciences. They tell me they are “going to lab”, or they talk about their “PI”, phrases and labels that hold only a generic meaning in my mind. And if I ever have the chance to talk to, say, an English major, I am amazed by how different our courses of study are. Indeed, before beginning the Brackenridge, my opportunities to deeply explore the academic focuses of those outside my departments were cherished but few.
The Brackenridge is truly a unique experience because it consistently brings students of diverse academic backgrounds together. My cohort is as academically diverse as any. I myself am examining housing prices and sea level rise in the UK; Grace Bohl is exploring depression’s impact on the temporal lobe; Harsh Hiwase is researching the connection between stroke risk and African heritage; Connor Diaz is analyzing the American identity throughout history; and Armani Manov is studying the hidden complexities of cell cycles. Clearly, each of our projects has a distinct and unique focus.
Of our five projects, three have a connection to biology and the health sciences. However, they are still vastly different from each other. Grace’s project is more neuroscience-focused, while Harsh’s project is more cardiology-focused. Harsh is documenting a specific health risk, while Armani is mapping cell cycles all over the human body. The list of differences could go on and on. I am incredibly happy that I am learning about new and exciting topics within biology and the health sciences, a field that I rarely delve into myself.
On the other hand, Connor’s project is humanities-centric, differentiating itself from the rest of our cohort with a thought-provoking, almost philosophical, question. Personally, I love hearing about historical analyses, as the ideas shared can be at once accessible to a general audience and yet incredibly complicated. I am excited to hear more as Connor dives deeper into his project. Although a cursory glance may suggest that Connor’s research path will be almost completely different from the rest of us, I find Connor’s search for the meaning of the American identity potentially related to Harsh’s project. Perhaps there is an important historical angle when connecting ancestry and health.
There are numerous benefits to working across fields. I find that my project is primarily STEM-related, and yet there is an undeniable social angle as well. After all, each of my data points is connected to some purchase within the housing market, an interaction between independent human actors reacting to the incentives, both personal and societal, around them. As we continue into the summer, I hope that my consistent exposure to the scientific method and historical analysis will drive me to be exact with my natural experiments and curious as to the social implications of my findings. Of course, I may not understand the complex jargon of my biology and health science peers. I may not yet grasp the how of my peer’s projects: how to work with a PI, or how to slice and stain brains, or how to construct cell cycles. We all have different research routines, working in a lab or by ourselves, with software or with books and paper. But what is indispensable are our research philosophies, how we ask questions, and the reasons why each of our projects are important not only in our own fields, but in each other’s fields as well.