Why multidisciplinary ?

There is a common belief that multidisciplinarity is a trend specific especially for the last century. However, even few centuries ago, when well-established and considered complete classification of scientific and science-related fields of activity were commonly accepted, the greatest advances in science and technology were made due to people having expertise in several domains. The frequent needs of similar multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches led to the formation of new domains of science, like for instance, electro-chemistry, nanotechnology, biotechnology etc. The spectacular emergence of new disciplines and domains of activities and the expansion of their boundaries have given an impetus to the development of new technologies connecting natural sciences, informatics and medicine. Through a series of breakthroughs in both fundamental and applied research, the corresponding scientific disciplines are now intensively developed. Therefore, multidisciplinary studies are characteristic for various kinds of large-scale research programs, aimed to solve scientific problems of different complexity involving experts in more than one discipline. Usually, for such research programs, scientific specialists from different research institutions or universities are requested to exchange information and benefit from such collaborations. If, for instance, we would consider the Republic of Moldova then one can observe a clear division of human and other type of resources between institutions, belonging to mostly-educational or mostly-scientific institutions. Therefore, joining the common efforts from these institutions possessing expertise in different scientific domains will be a good research potential. Similarly, the common resources of the educational and research institutions, and the enterprise sectors would have a practical potential as well. Thus, multidisciplinarity in the modern science means a strong cooperation of specialists from different domains and from different institutions, and - quite important - from various countries. Supporting the multidisciplinary and international cooperation and activities can not be conceived without frequent meetings of scientists/experts via different scientific manifestations (conferences, workshops). The multidisciplinary science in the modern world can be sustained and developed only by providing opportunities for scientists to share their experience, to present each other their current achievements and, why not, making proposals for multidisciplinary cooperation for attracting various national or international funding.

Through cooperation to the future

Besides the interdisciplinar cooperation, we sincerely hope that this workshop helped researchers from our Countries, i.e., Republic of Moldova and Federal Republic of Germany, etc., to know each other better and to benefit from the exchange of knowledge. Also we expected to involve young researchers in the workshop discussions, and to familiarize them with research opportunities offered by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Germany in general. The Humboldt Kolleg on Multidisciplinarity in Modern Science was a place to go!