ABSTRACT

I. INTRODUCTION

The Center for Cellular Construction (CCC) is a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center comprising four San Francisco Bay area universities, an industrial research lab, and a nonprofit science museum. The Center’s vision is inherently multidisciplinary: “to design and build cells and tissue with specific three-dimensional structures” (1). Each institution plays a crucial role: universities expand science foundations, industry develops and commercializes technologies based on basic research, and science museums engage and educate the public. The CCC showcases the synergistic benefits of multidisciplinary collaboration among academia, industry, and a science museum while also uncovering the challenges of bringing members of these institutions together.

Academic institutions are traditionally organized into separate departments, each with its own staff, funding, and culture (2). However, interdisciplinary science is vital for addressing complex challenges such as climate change and public health. The CCC works to dismantle these silos with consistent funding, intellectual property agreements, shared facilities, and long-term collaborations. These issues and challenges are explored by examining three recent CCC workshops.

A. Rapid Idea Generation Workshop (the Exploratorium)

In February 2023, the Exploratorium hosted the first Rapid Idea Generation (RIG) workshop, bringing together 15 CCC members from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), the University of California Berkeley, San Francisco State University (SFSU), and IBM Research with five Exploratorium staff and three Exploratorium facilitators to address a design challenge (Fig 1, left panel). The agenda was to brainstorm and prototype museum experiences for real-time interaction with living microscopic specimens. The RIG aimed to re-establish in-person connections, build confidence in rapid prototyping, encourage science outreach, and generate ideas for engaging exhibits.

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Before the event, CCC participants visited the Exploratorium to familiarize themselves with its exhibits and observe public engagement. The RIG workshop day lasted 8 h and included a lunch break. Participants started Round 1 with the marshmallow challenge, a team-building exercise (see Supplemental Material). Guided by Exploratorium staff, the small teams, comprising participants from diverse backgrounds, brainstormed by using coarse materials to create low-fidelity prototypes and then presented their ideas for group feedback.

In Round 2, teams were shuffled to enhance prototypes with diverse perspectives. Feedback from participants and Exploratorium staff supported idea development throughout the day. Facilitators selected two themes—interacting with cells via sound and touch. Participants returned to the biology laboratory for feasibility experiments and further prototyping. These activities created new opportunities for public programming and exhibit development at the Exploratorium.

II. DISCUSSION

The RIG workshop encouraged students and professionals to think outside the box, stimulate creative thinking, and engage in unusual and novel solutions. Rapid prototyping taught skills to quickly test numerous ideas and accept that failure is a natural step toward innovation. Involving participants from diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and cultures enriched the designs, perspectives, and approaches, creating a broader solution set.

Having explored the idea and design space, the process now moves to the development stage, where the specific demands of a successful interactive museum exhibit must be met. These include building a robust exhibit to demonstrate the basic science and phenomena, providing a positive user experience that engages visitors and promotes inquiry, and addressing practical considerations such as durability under heavy use, maintainability, and safety.

The IP workshop introduced many CCC members to the value of patents in commercial endeavors and the process of attaining a patent. Requiring each participant to complete an invention disclosure based on their work provided a concrete means to teach participants to view their work from a commercial perspective. Real-world stories from researchers who brought laboratory work to the marketplace demonstrated the value of patents in protecting work and building businesses. The workshop and similar efforts throughout the CCC have increased our number of invention disclosures.

Discussions among IP experts and CCC members revealed strong cultural differences between academia and industry. Openness is fundamental in scientific research, promoting the sharing of methods and results through publication. Students are accustomed to freely downloading music, code, videos, and papers. Professors typically focus on publishing to support tenure, grant applications, and credibility (6–8), with some preferring to keep their research in the public domain (9). Additionally, attaining a patent is expensive, so universities typically pursue the process only if a licensee shows interest and invests in the research. To reduce investment risks, universities often use low-cost, 1-year provisional patent applications to solicit outside interest (10).

In contrast, industry values secrecy for a competitive edge, which leads to patent systems protecting inventors and their investors. With a 20-year lifespan, inventions are often patented before market proof. At its inception, the CCC established prenegotiated IP agreements to facilitate open discussion and collaboration, bridging the cultural gap between academia and industry. This inclusive atmosphere encourages cross-discipline brainstorming and inventions, highlighting the need for IP and entrepreneurial education and support for students and professors.

The Bromoform Production in Seaweed workshop encouraged students to step out of the laboratory and engage with the environment, taking actions to devise creative solutions to address global issues. Leveraging their collective abilities in biology and chemistry combined with access to the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, participants fostered a space to share skills and problem-solving approaches. Their collaborative effort resulted in an effective method to detect seaweed peroxisomes (i.e., cell structures vital for producing bromoforms), which reduce methane production in ruminant animals.