What we are trying to really point out is that interdisciplinary research is not necessarily investigator-led. It's something where there's a shared topic of national interest and then an ability to bring together researchers from various parts of the academic sector to address that.
One of the things we see in the European universities is these connections between research expertise that is connected—not necessarily the same—and is able to come at a problem from various angles and benefit from that. It's something I see when I look at the network of my members across the country.
There is a desire to work around artificial intelligence, for example. It's not a theoretical opportunity. The opportunity is to take something we know about and try to apply that to real problems. That would be done in different ways by different institutions. That's an opportunity to think about implementation. What does that look like for small businesses? What does that look like for the agricultural sector, the mining sector or elder care, for example?
I think it's that idea of trying to get networks of experts together to solve big challenges rather than stand-alone projects that are focused around one researcher's idea.