Incubating interdisciplinary biodesigners in the lab and the studio

Biodesign is an inherently interdisciplinary pursuit, where design and scientific knowledge and practices are come together to benefit human and planetary wellbeing. To grow a biodesigner requires nurturing disciplinary knowledge, providing interdisciplinary exposure and creating effective boundary objects. However, research in education has noted that the term interdisciplinary itself is poorly defined. The approach at our university intends to build interdisciplinary knowledge that goes beyond the school in which students have been enrolled. The benefits of inter- and transdisciplinary education include building capability for critical thinking, creation of third spaces for learning at knowledge boundaries, and simulating professional experiences. This paper uses the incubator, an important resource in many biodesign projects, as a metaphor for examining two knowledge cultures of science and design. We examine the critical venues of learning from two distinct knowledge fields that come together in biodesign: the Design Studio and the Scientific Lab. These learning spaces are separately used to build epistemic fluency and have been separately studied in domains of science and design education. Using a co-constructed stories (CCS) process, we reflect on the program and speculate on transformational education to grow a biodesigner. Through the reflections of students and educators, we examine the Problem-based Learning approaches that were employed through the interdisciplinary biodesign classes. The stories created through this process offer new pathways for teaching and learning biodesign in an undergraduate tertiary program, showing new ways to combine and understand different kinds of scientific and design knowledge.