Ankita Rathore, a research student, is studying how people perceive the rapidly emerging field of nanotechnology. In this opinion article, she shares some aspects of her ongoing research and her views on why it is essential to factor in public opinion before implementing new technologies for their benefit.

Disciplinary barriers and a pronounced lack of awareness regarding social issues hamper the holistic progress of science in many ways. In this article, Ritika Mukherji discusses how science truly blossoms without blinkers, when the walls between disciplines fall, gleaning lessons from an interdisciplinary dialogue on diversity.

What makes any field of science better or worse than another? Does indulging in such debates advance or hinder the cause of science? In this article, Gayathri, a PhD student at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, explores the potential pitfalls of a system of thought that pitches fields and systems of doing science against each other.

In this next article in our series on interdisciplinary research, Kausik Chattopadhyay from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali, speaks about his journey into the field of studying bacterial pore-forming toxins, and how his academic background and present scientific environment have equipped him to probe this question from multidisciplinary angles.

In this first article in our new series on interdisciplinarity, Gautam Menon, theoretical physicist (The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai & Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai) and Sandhya P Koushika, neurobiologist (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai) provide critical insights on tackling interdisciplinary problems, gained from a decade of steadfast collaboration.