WPT University Place	U Place Presents		Steve Paulson, "Eureka! An Interdisciplinary Meeting of the Minds"		December 7, 2011	UP531  cc >> Steve Paulson: Thank you so much for coming. I'm Steve Paulson from Wisconsin Public Radio. I am the executive producer of the nationally syndicated program "To the Best of Our Knowledge," and it is my great pleasure to be here as part of this event, to be part of the opening festivities for the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery to celebrate this magnificent building and to talk about new ways of doing science for the 21st century. As I was preparing for this event, I talked briefly with each of the scientists on our panel and I have to say I got really excited. Each of these four scientists is doing fascinating and groundbreaking work. And they're also participating in a grand experiment exploring new ways to cross boundaries and to collaborate with scientists in different disciplines. Ultimately this is an exploration of scientific discovery and of the very nature of creativity itself. Let me tell you what we're going to do for the next hour. I will do a short interview, conversation with each of our panelists, roughly 10 minutes for each, and then we'll have a brief conversation at the end with all of our panelists and we'll have a free-flowing conversation and we will answer all of the great mysteries under the universe in those remaining 15 minutes or so. And I should add that we only have time to give a brief overview of the various projects that each of these scientists is working on, so consider this just a taste of what they're doing which I hope will wet your appetite for more. 

So let me introduce our distinguished panel. John Denu, right there, is leading the epigenetics theme in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, which is the public partner of the twin research facilities here at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery building. John is also a professor in the Department of Biomolecular Chemistry. He and his team are studying the underlying molecular and chemical mechanisms that govern gene expression. Their fundamental investigations will foster developments in novel therapeutics that target epigenetic diseases. Patricia Flatley Brennan, at the end there, is leading the living environments laboratory in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Patty also is the Moehlman Bascom Professor and chair in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and has a joint faculty appointment in the UW School of Nursing. She and her team are using virtual reality and computer modeling to simulate and optimize any environment in which patients receive care. T "Rock" Mackie, to my immediate left, is leading the medical devices area in the Morgridge Institute for Research which is the private nonprofit partner of the twin institutes. Rock also is a professor in the Department of Medical Physics and inventor and cofounder of the TomoTherapy treatment system. 

He and his Morgridge team are focusing on advancing innovative new instrumentation-based solutions to an array of challenges in human health and effective intervention. And Susan Millar is leading the education research area that is part of both the Morgridge Institute for Research and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Susan is an anthropologist and also a senior scientist in the UW's Wisconsin Center for Education Research. She and her team are developing digital games for learning science in order to make scientific and biomedical discovery and practice visible to students, professionals, and broad public audiences. So we have quite a panel with us here. Rock Mackie, let me start with you. You have been a pioneer in developing new medical devices that are used to treat cancer patients. Can you explain what you do? >> Rock Mackie: Well, for the last 24 or 25 years at the University of Wisconsin I first led a group, in fact I was privileged to really come into a great environment here of an excellent program in radiation oncology. And so this group developed a radiation treatment planning system that really was one of the pioneers in 3-D treatment planning so that you could take a CT scan or a magnetic resonance scan and plan where the beams of radiation should be going and where you should be avoiding having the beams going. >> Paulson: So this is radiation to target the tumors. 

>> Mackie: Exactly. So it's very important, in the old days you essentially used a 2-D image and you really couldn't tell where the tumor was, and so the group really developed ways to integrate a CT scan where you can see where the tumor was with the ability then to visualize it in 3-D. >> Paulson: You're saying that traditionally the way that radiation was given, the doctors didn't really know where the tumor was? >> Mackie: They didn't really know where the tumor was. It's sad to say but 30 years ago you really only had bony anatomy and most often tumors are soft tissue and until the advent of the CT scanner, we really couldn't see soft tissue in much detail. And so we were relying on essentially bony anatomy and where tumors are usually with respect to the bony anatomy. And it was really the advent of CT scanning that gave you that ability to see it but also a framework from which to compute the radiation dose. >> Paulson: So tell us how this new technology works and how precise you can zero in on the tumor. >> Mackie: And so we went from probably centimeter precision down to millimeter precision. And this allows then much tighter margins around the target volume and the ability then to avoid the normal tissue. And the group then went on to ways of delivering radiation therapy. 

And so the research group that I managed is a very large group, and I must say that I'm not the only inventor of TomoTherapy, there was many, many students and professionals working on the project, developed then a way of precisely delivering the radiation therapy in three dimensions. And instead of just large uniform beams of radiation, we developed ways of modulating the beams so that instead of uniform beams just shaping the fields, we were delivering intensity modulated beams. And not just from one direction but from multiple directions. And then we also put this together to actually have CT scan during the treatment itself. And so TomoTherapy really represents intensity modulated radiation therapy delivered from multiple directions, but a CT scan also to verify that the patient actually is being set up correctly. >> Paulson: So what does this mean in terms of actual treatment of people with cancer? How does this change the game? >> Mackie: Well it really changes the game because really for the first time when this technology was brought into the marketplace, one had the ability to really target the disease, make sure that the dose was relatively homogeneous to the tumor, in other words the dose was being applied correctly, but you're also avoiding normal tissue so that complications like, for example, rectal bleeding and prostate cancer, or dry mouth, or it's called xerostomia in head/neck cancer really doesn't have to develop. Whereas, again 30 years ago, those were just side effects. They weren't complications with probabilities, they were side effects. Everybody got rectal bleeding. Everybody got xerostomia. 

>> Paulson: So you're saying traditionally the problem has just been too much radiation or too much radiation given to the wrong parts of the body. >> Mackie: We had to have very generous margins in order to make sure we treated the tumor so there was side effects, 100% complications. And so we've changed that into a small fraction of patients have to get morbid complications. >> Paulson: Let me ask about how your work now might change now that you are part of the Morgridge Institute for Research. Do you see this new facility as allowing you to do new kinds of science? >> Mackie: Well in fact really all we were doing is following the computer explosion. So we worked on algorithms that were too slow for conventional radiation therapy. The TomoTherapy machine originally was too slow to actually be practical with the computing standards of the day. So we're taking, at least part of my work is taking that and applying it to other fields like pathology. Pathology is a field that is relatively static, hasn't really enjoyed the benefits of 3-D imaging, and so we think it's going to be possible to take an older field like pathology and essentially do the same sort of thing that we did in radiation oncology, try to use modern computing and storage of images to make pathology transform as well. >> Paulson: So you're saying there's something about, is it being in the facility here, is it having access to people in other disciplines that will allow you to kind of expand what you're doing? >> Mackie: So one of the things that we're going to have here is an excellent computing resource. 

So Miron Livny, who is both a member of Morgridge and a member of Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, has a wonderful computing resource here that's with hundreds of servers and thousands of CPU for cluster computing. So we'll be taking advantage of that and we'll be taking advantage of that in designing medical devices in general because we're of the feeling now that you can essentially 100% simulate medical devices even before you build them. And we'll also be taking the next step in trying to prototype them with rapid prototyping technology so that we can very, very quickly modify the design. But we feel that we'll simulate designs, we'll rapid prototype, feed them back and be able to more quickly design medical devices here at Morgridge. >> Paulson: Do you think you'll also take on new projects as well? >> Mackie: Well yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that we want to do is to not be in isolation from the rest of the campus but to actually reach out to the rest of the university. So, for example, we'll have a relatively small machine shop here but we'll be reaching out to other shops on the university and take advantage of that, and we will also then in return be looking for projects that we can participate at Morgridge from the university. >> Paulson: Do you see what this institution represents and your involvement in this as a new way of doing science? >> Mackie: Well it's a new way, I think, of approaching the whole problem of learning and science, because I think fundamentally what this institution represents is bringing together people from a lot of different fields that normally wouldn't be really interacting with each other. If you look at most of the buildings on the campus, they essentially belong to one discipline or very similar disciplines. This is really the first time that we're bringing together people from multiple facilities, multiple colleges, and we've designed the building even so that we have to collide with our fellow building occupants. 

For example, the wash rooms are all on that side of the building. And so people multiple times of the day are going to have to leave their office and collide with people because there's only one wash room. And there's going to be wonderful food services here so that we'll be able to then merge and collect at lunch and coffee breaks. >> Paulson: That's probably a science in itself to figure out where people congregate, whether it's over the water fountain or the coffee pot. >> Mackie: And apparently there's even going to be beer here occasionally. [LAUGHTER] So you never know what might come when you mix beer and science. >> Paulson: Well thank you very much. Let me turn next to Susan Millar. You are a cultural anthropologist with a particular interest in the gaming world. And I'm guessing that a lot of parents think that computer games are actually the root of all evil when it comes to how their children learn, but you are, of course, a huge advocate of gaming. 

So what makes you think that gaming is a crucial tool in science education, and not to mention in actual scientific discovery? >> Susan Millar: Well, first of all, I'd like to make very clear that I am not a particularly good gamer myself, but I am convinced of the value of gaming for making science accessible and visible in the current situation that we have with the fact that so many of our young people and adults are actually in the gaming world. They play games. Going back to your point about parents, since I've begun explaining to people the kinds of games that we're developing here through the Morgridge Institute and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, they've been saying to me, how fast are you going to be able to get these out there? I need my kids to be playing your games and not the games they are playing. So let me give you an example. I think that will clarify why I'm so excited about these types of games. But before I go to the example, I want to give just a little bit more context. The education research challenge area is a group of people that includes learning scientists from the University of Wisconsin, programmers, people who do education research like myself and many others, artists, and musicians, and of course computer programmers, and in each of our game design teams we are including as integral members, researchers like the ones that are sitting to my right and left here. So the first example that I'd like to give you involves exactly the sort of thing that Rock Mackie was just describing. In fact, when Rock learned about our interest in developing games for making science visible, for engaging people in the process of science, in a game problem-solving format, he came up to me and said, you know, we've got this problem in the medical technology world that I operate in, and he began to explain pretty much the problem that he just described to you. Well, one thing led to another. 

We've been working closely with Rock and with colleagues of his over in the med school and we now have, in fact you can find it up on the second floor east conference room right now, a demo of this game called "Oncology." And in "Oncology," we enable players to figure out, using two-dimensional CT or NMR scans how to contour or identify the 3-D mass of an actual tumor from various data sets that have been provided to us through Rock Mackie and his colleagues. And then you have to figure that out, and you have to practice with the mouse, and you get it and then you go into the treatment process where you figure out how you're going to do the radiation. And then when you're done with that you get a score. And it's pretty scary sometimes because you don't necessarily get a very good score. But that motivates players to figure this out better, and it also teaches you a lot about human anatomy, because a core idea in this game is that you can't figure out what's not supposed to be there, that would be the tumor, unless you know what's supposed to be there, which would be the healthy anatomy. >> Paulson: And so you're saying this is a real game. This is not just sort of working with a computer program and figuring out how to map a tumor. This actually uses the same kind of gaming technology that my 13-year-old son uses when he plays games? >> Millar: Right. It's this integration of what engages gamers. We've got a problem, and you've got goals, and you want to get good scores, and it's leveled, and so on and so forth, just like all games are. 

But the problem, the content is this really valuable data-based science and medical technology that invites young people, and for that matter adults, into the world that medical practitioners and scientists live in. So it's really very exciting. >> Paulson: Now do you see gaming as mainly a tool for education, for science education, or do you see it also as a way to make new discoveries? >> Millar: Well that's a great question actually. We see it for both. And another example we have a game called "Virulent," also on demo upstairs on the second floor, which was built in collaboration with John Yin and also with Paul Ahlquist, and I expect we'll be working with John Denu on that one, which is at the subcellular level. It's a situation where we have viruses trying to infect cells and replicate themselves in the cell and then explode out and duplicate themselves, and so on and so forth. Well, in the process of designing this game, and it's great art work incidentally, I hope you'll take a look at it, the folks who are doing the work, the programmers and our postdoc Nathan Patterson was asking John Yin, well so I don't really understand how the immune response in the cell works here. And John was like, you know, I think you've reached the limits of my understanding of immunology. And so our game designers and learning scientists have to go off and talk to some of the immunologists on campus. So next thing you know, John Yin and these immunologists are having a conversation about how this should actually look in the game. 

So we anticipate a lot of things that are going to come out of that sort, because when you visualize things at this level and put them into gaming environments, it really, I think, deeply engages the scientists in trying to think through how to make that work. >> Paulson: Now are you talking about professional gamers, or I should say professional scientists who are doing the gaming, or are you also saying that amateur gamers, maybe even kids, could participate in some of this scientific work and make real contributions in science? >> Millar: Okay, well thank you for that question. We actually, and this is an idea that came out of the collaboration that we've had so far with Rock, we've already begun to think about, we're waiting on some NIH funding results or grant proposal results, we've already got this idea of developing what's called a professional amateur community whereby the amateurs develop skills at a sufficient level that they get invited into a community where they're allowed to, or invited to contribute their efforts to professionals. And we do hope to do something along these lines with the Oncology game that we demo'd upstairs. >> Paulson: Who would some of these amateurs be? Who might be invited? >> Millar: They would be young people. I'm really quite convinced that young people are going to be perhaps better at figuring out how to do three-dimensional work on a two-dimensional screen than many adults. >> Paulson: By young people, are you talking college, high school, middle school? >> Millar: No, I'm talking 10-, 12-, 14-year-olds. >> Paulson: You're talking 14-year-olds could actually do real science, could actually help this kind of scientific work? >> Millar: Rock, what do you think? >> Mackie: Absolutely. In fact when we first started trying to get physicians to outline on a computer where a tumor was, we found that the young radiologists were way better than the older radiation oncologists and almost the younger you were the better you were. And so the hand motor skills of a young gamer is much better than that of a physician. 

>> Millar: Right, and along these lines, there is some findings coming out of the learning sciences that demonstrate that surgeons who are intensive gamers as young people, and probably still in their lives if they had time, are better, are more effective at the surgery than people who are not trained in gaming. >> Paulson: Wow. I wonder if they're teaching that in medical school. >> Millar: I think it's still not taught in medical school, but there's huge opportunity to use game environments, particularly with all of the advances in simulation that Rock was mentioning and with the work and the opportunities that we have in working with Miron Livny's tremendous opportunities there. >> Paulson: So what do you see as the future of gaming as how it might be applied to what scientists do, and particularly given this new facility and the emphasis on cross disciplinary work? >> Millar: Well those are two questions. Let me take the first one which is the future of this kind of gaming and then I'll come back to the facility. Frankly, I think what we have here is what's called the disruptive technology. I think that we will be able to use what we've learned about what engages young people and adults in the gaming world and integrate it with this high quality cutting-edge exciting science. One of the things about gaming that is so interesting and what makes it so compelling is that there's problems. The games pose these challenging problems and they're leveled. 

So that means that if you're very uncertain about how to do something in this particular game world, you come in at a very easy level. And then when you master that they level you up, and so on and so forth. The games are very, very good at doing that. We're not that good in education at doing that with all of our students. Individuals get to play at their own level. Individuals get to make mistakes and they get to try over and nobody has to know. There's a lot of really powerful pedagogical attributes of gaming. And I think that to this point the efforts that have been made, and there have been many efforts to try to make games for science, but the games for science that have been built thus far haven't been compelling. They've been too sort of preachy and pedagogical in nature and kids just don't play them. They don't take off. 

They don't go to scale. And what we want to do is through our user testing and also because we've got such great problems that my Morgridge and WID colleagues are bringing to us. We think that the problems that are going to be in these games are going to be so compelling, the visuals are going to be so good, the game mechanics are going to be so good that they are going to go to scale and be exciting. >> Paulson: By scale, you're talking about becoming mainstream. >> Millar: Yep. They're going to be available on web and through popular web portals and so forth. >> Paulson: And to follow up then on the question of the interdisciplinary work, does this change the nature of what you do? >> Millar: I guess I view this as a combination of my efforts throughout the course of my professional life to work in cross disciplinary settings, because the opportunities here are greater than I've ever experienced. We can't build these games without the scientists. They can't build games without us. And our group of researchers is learning a lot more about the learning sciences and how to push these approaches and they're learning in the process. 

And they're also achieving goals that they have for making their science visible and accessible to broad publics. >> Paulson: Well thank you. I'm going to turn next to John Denu. Your focus, your research focus is on epigenetics which is, I know, a very exciting new branch of biology, and I think we need to start by just getting the basics on what epigenetics is. >> John Denu: So over the last, I guess, decade and a half there was a very large push to sequence the human genome. And with the idea, and this was presented from a number of prominent scientists that if we understood the human genome, if we understood the sequence of the human genome that that potentially would unlock the secrets of what it is to be human or would provide sort of the molecular basis for genetic diseases. >> Paulson: I remember that. With the great excitement about the human genome project when we finally would sequence the entire human genome we were going to uncover the secrets of life. >> Denu: Right. It's a good starting point and some may say it was slightly oversold but it was an important starting point. 

But I think what we now appreciate is that there's a whole layer of information called the epigenome that is really what dictates whether particular genes are expressed or not. And a good example is once the scientific community solved the human genome problem, we also solved a lot of other, we sequenced a number of other organisms as well. And we share about 99% of the same genes as a mouse. Okay? So clearly the content of our genes isn't necessary to explain these remarkable differences between us and mice. Also, in terms of genetic mutations, just because an individual has a particular genetic mutations that predisposes them to a particular disease, again doesn't mean that they're going to manifest that particular disease. So what's at the basis for that? A lot of us believe it's the epigenome. It's this additional layer of information, again, that controls whether a particular gene is expressed or not. >> Paulson: So this is what, chemical information that's kind of switching the gene on or off? >> Denu: Exactly. There's a number of different mechanisms, and this is still very active part of what we're interested in and a number of scientists is figuring out what is that chemical information. We have a good idea of proteins that wrap the DNA and expose genes. 

That's critical. There's a number of the chemical modifications that occur on those proteins, but there's also chemical modifications that occur on the DNA. And so these two mechanisms are thought to be at least two of the mechanisms that help regulate whether particular genes are expressed or not. But the good news is, I would say, in terms of understanding that our epigenome is really plastic, it's malleable, it changes throughout our lifetime. >> Paulson: Unlike DNA. >> Denu: Unlike DNA. >> Paulson: Which is sort of set there forever. >> Denu: Right. So that's sort of the hardware and the software is the epigenome. So we have an opportunity throughout our lives to alter our epigenome, perhaps by our diet, by our lifestyle, by potential therapeutic drugs that intervene at the level of the epigenome and sort of re-express genes that were disregulated in a particular disease state. 

>> Paulson: Give me an example of that. How might a drug influence the epigenome to change someone's well-being? >> Denu: Right, so there's actually two epigenetic drugs that are available on the market to treat different forms of cancer. The mode of action appears to be that they influence the enzymes that put on those chemical modifications that I discussed. And again those chemical modifications are sort of a code that designates whether that particular gene is expressed or not. So the way that folks think this works is that these drugs can alter the epigenome, this chemical information, to a point where say a tumor suppresser gene, so a gene that typically should be expressed at fairly high level to sort of intervene when clearly cells are becoming cancerous. And this particular gene may, in this cancer it's expression may be extremely low. So one way to increase the expression of that gene would be through intervention through these, again, small molecule drugs that would target the epigenome and re-express that gene. And that particular gene may induce what's called apoptosis which is a way of cells essentially to commit suicide. So the cell knows it's in trouble. It knows it's a cancer cell. 

And a lot of our cells do this automatically. It knows things are wrong and it commits suicide and can't transform. >> Paulson: Do you see the study of epigenetics as being perhaps the next great frontier in biology? >> That's exactly how I feel about it. [LAUGHTER] And I have a vested interest obviously, but I do. Again, the genome was great. It was the decade of the genome, and we need that information to understand how the epigenome actually regulates the expression of those genes. So I see it as, again, the next frontier of biology. If we understand that and we understand how development works, differentiation of cells, how stem cells differentiate into different types of cells even though they have the same genetic information, so I think it really is the next frontier and I'm really excited to be able to develop that here at the University of Wisconsin in the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. And I will be able to hire our theme, that is we'll be able to hire three new faculty to campus. So these are scientists that don't exist here at the University of Wisconsin. 

Hopefully they're new scientists that are being minted right now doing postdoctoral training, and we're going to try to recruit those folks to build a little catalyst here in this facility. >> Paulson: We've been talking about the nature of collaborative work, of crossing disciplinary boundaries, does that apply to your work as well? >> Denu: It does. I think by nature the work does cross disciplines if you're really interested in solving the problem. And I think there's different ideas of thinking about how do you catalyze interdisciplinary work. And one way to do it is the problem. What's the problem? If all the scientists agree that that's an important problem, then you say, okay what disciplines do we need to solve that problem? And I think certainly within the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery and the Morgridge Institute there are a number of folks that I know we're going to have to tap into to understand especially the computational side of this epigenome, which is, again, it's probably more complex than the genome. And how are we going to solve that problem if we don't have impressive computational resources. And this particular facility has tremendous resources for that. So we certainly are going to tap into our colleagues in computer science and computational biology. >> Paulson: So if you were to speculate 10-15 years into the future, I'm guessing the study of epigenetics will be far advanced by then. 

How will that change what we know about biology? How will that change medicine? >> Denu: Well, my hope is that if we understand the molecular and the chemical basis or the instructions, if you will, of the epigenome and how that actually translates into a particular cell knowing when to express that gene or not, if we know those molecular details, then we can design rational therapies, rational drugs that target that particular process. And I think there's also a possibility for individualized medicine. If we all could have our epigenomes mapped, that would be really cool, and I think that's a possibility in the future. And if we know what that code means, in terms of maybe a disease state or a diagnostic for a particular condition, we can use that information, again, to design rational kinds of therapies again that could be on an individual basis. And I think that's a reality in the next 10 to 15 years. If we get the work done. >> Paulson: Well thank you. >> Denu: Thank you. >> Paulson: Last, but not least, we turn to Patty Brennan. And I have to say, I think you are the first nurse I've met who is also an expert on virtual reality. 

So tell us what kind of work you do in the field of virtual worlds. >> Patricia Brennan: We're trying to use virtual reality techniques, a cave, a room, that has images projected on all sides to make an individual feel like they are in a different space, to better understand how people take care of themselves at home. Now, I'm not the expert alone. We have a team of people working with us, computer scientists, biomedical engineers, nurses and design specialists, and they're helping us know how do we use this room that's right now just a piece of blank walls and Plexiglas with specialized projectors around it to make us be able to understand any kitchen, any bathroom, any household, anywhere in the world. The challenge we see is this healthcare revolution is changing biologically, the point of care is moving more and more into the households and less into hospitals and clinics. We need to be able to be ready to take advantage of all the wonderful advances in healthcare but we need to help society and every day people be able to do that in places that are familiar to them. So our team is going to use the images of the virtual reality cave to inspire designers, developers of devices, to better understand how to make them work in households. For the last 15 years as we've migrated healthcare from hospitals and clinics into homes, we've taken business machines, computers from office desks or glucometers from laboratories and just pushed them in the house wherever they would fit, on a coffee table in the living room or stashed in the back of the bathroom. And now what we want to do is take, instead, start with the point of care, the household, and build the context into design of these technologies from the beginning. >> Paulson: So you're talking about how people actually do take care of themselves in whether it's the bedroom or the kitchen. 

And it's not necessarily the gadget itself, it's the way they use it. >> Brennan: It's the person and the context and the tool that they're using. What virtual reality techniques do that's different than just painting walls in very interesting ways are two things. First is that they project images, lots of different kinds of images that are easy to change, a little bit like computer games but they're ones that an individual is completely immersed in. That is a person will be completely inside the room. But the second thing is by using special trackers on the eyeglasses or the shoulders of the individual, the images change so that the person actually feels as they're walking around a room that they're actually crossing a floor, or as they move into a kitchen that they're actually able to open a refrigerator or move something around on the counter. So the experience, the presence, is created by visual images that respond to a person's moving. >> Paulson: Can you give me an example of a particular problem that people might face and how this work would help solve that problem? >> Brennan: Well one of the recent things we're trying to understand is how parents take care of children with complex health problems. And we know that there's lots of different kinds of supplies that are needed and activities and exercises that have to happen in the home. And any of you that have taken care of a child, you know a lot of it happens low on the floor when you're sitting down with the child. 

So we will use the cave to recreate, say, a child's bedroom, use the sensors on the mother and the child to position them and then understand how does the mother do an exercise with the child or how does the crowded space in the kitchen maybe make it more difficult for the mother to put the medications together for the child. We want to understand things like how does clutter affect performance or how much space is needed to really carry out activities. Many of you already know what it's like to be sent home from the physician's office with some instructions to do something at home. But the clinicians don't really have an idea of what does your house look. Can you really elevate your foot without tripping somebody else walking across the room or where are you going to put that stack of bandages that they want you to use to keep your dressings changed. So we'll be able to build tools, for example, that might actually move out from walls to support people who need to have a leg elevated or create different kinds of storage devices that take up less space but are still very stable in a kitchen. >> Paulson: So people are wearing goggles as they're in this virtual world? >> Brennan: You wear specialized eyeglasses over top regularly glasses if you wear them, and through these eyeglasses you see the images in 3-D. Now you've all been to 3-D movies already, so you sort of get the idea. When you look at the images with plain sight, they look kind of fuzzy and are not quite aligned, but the 3-D glasses allow you to see them in more precision. But what's more important than that is the 3-D glasses also include the sensors that tell the projector where you are so the image changes with respect to where the individual is. 

If you've walked past the walls out here you get a little bit of a feel of an image that changes that knows that you're there. But we're going to make a big technological advance here at Wisconsin that hasn't occurred anywhere else, and this is in collaboration with our colleagues in computer science, and the firm that's helping us build the cave. In almost every virtual reality space, the image change is relative to one person. So if there's two or three or four people in the cave, they all see the same images and that can make you a little nauseous. Now in home care, very often there's two people involved. So a cave that only had images relative to one person wouldn't be useful to us. So our scientists, our computer scientists and our visualization group are building a dual view, an ability to have two people in the cave see unique images. So we're all sitting here together but you're seeing the wall behind me and I'm seeing the fountain out there. In a cave in a home care environment the same things happens. You see unique images. 

The goggles will allow people to see slightly different images and still see through the goggles to see each other. That way we can understand how a mother and a kid or an adult and an elderly parent work together to accomplish care at home. >> Paulson: So how do you actually figure out what a home environment is like? Are you bringing people in who might be having health problems and bringing them in to your cave to test this? >> Brennan: Well the first thing, we've been studying home care and home environments for 25 years. And about 10 years ago with the support of Intel we spent about two years in Dodge and Jefferson County visiting about a hundred households, and we have pictures of lots of things, bedrooms and kitchens and stuffed cabinet drawers. And so that's helped inspire our computer designers to get some sense about how big this space needs to be, what kind of visual cues need to be there. And then we can change it around. We can make the kitchen have a blue wall or a yellow wall. We can make the room larger or smaller by changing the computer commands. We're going to initially begin working with volunteer subjects because we know that there's aspects of the cave that might actually bring a sense of either claustrophobia or maybe just make someone dizzy. So we need to make sure first that we're working with individuals who don't have visual impairments, and who aren't sick to their stomachs or uncomfortable. 

But eventually we want to get to the point where when an individual is being discharged from a hospital we can send a specialized robot out to their house, take pictures of their house, bring them back, render it in the cave, that is make the cave wall look just like their house, and then do their discharge teaching right in the cave. So we can help them know how to plan where should I put my dressings or maybe I should move that rug because it's easy to fall on. So we eventually expect to be able to work with people with all kinds of abilities. >> Paulson: So if you look into your crystal ball 10-15 years from now, how do you think virtual reality will change the way healthcare is done? >> Brennan: Well I think we'll do several things. So first of all we're going to be having a much easier way to train people to take care of themselves. So you might stop at the virtual reality training unit before you leave the doctor's office to practice and rehearse and learn how to actually do the self-care practice you need, so you can be more confident. But we'll also, because we'll be able to create any environment, a battlefield, a surgical suite or a homeless shelter, we'll be able to understand how we modify the work of health professionals and the tools that they use when they're interacting with people in unusual or unexpected ways and places. >> Paulson: Do you see this as a teaching device as well? Does it mean that there's going to be fewer face-to-face interactions in the future and there will be more virtual world educational experiences? >> Brennan: That's something I don't think I'd put a bet on one way or the other. A few years ago everyone thought computer technology, virtual presence will be able to have everyone sit at home in their pajamas and still go to class. I don't think that's going to happen. 

But what we might find is with the visual cues, we may be able to have kids who are living remotely from their parents still be able to interact with them in an easy way. Or a video visit from a nurse help a person through a difficult time at night. We also, though, want to be building the devices that fit into the houses. So we might see very different shaped medicine bottles or very different kinds of ways that we store bandages, or we apply dressing changes, or we have ventilators. All this equipment, once built for the hospital it's moving into the home, has to be able to get across carpet or fit behind the sofa. So what I think will happen is we'll have tools that are purpose built for the environments where they will be used. >> Paulson: I think that's a wonderful place to leave it for this first portion of our program. And now let's open it up to a conversation among all of you. And really what we're talking about is, we're talking about several things, we're talking about the nature of scientific discovery, of what it takes to make scientific breakthroughs, and we're also talking about the nature of collaboration, the importance of interdisciplinary work. So let me ask about the collaboration. 

What is the ideal collaborative environment? Any of you? >> Mackie: Well, I just want to point out, as Patty was talking, that in North America, care is moving into the home but in many parts of the world care is really rare and expensive. And so having devices, medical devices, move into the home really enables manufacturers to lower the cost of medical devices and that makes them accessible to the developing world as well. And so I think the work that Patty is doing will have great impact in the developing world. >> Brennan: So to build off on that, Rock, and Steve's question, one of the things is curiosity and creativity to make collaborations in interdisciplinary science work. Rock of I have known of each other on the campus for a long time. We're curious about very similar things. How do people interact with devices that deliver high tech healthcare in a very precise way. We've never run into each other before we started working here. But now our labs are right across from each other downstairs. So the microfabrication area that Rock will be working in and the virtual space that we'll be able to test subjects in are 12 feet apart. 

So we'll not only have curiosity but we'll also have proximity, and I think that makes a very big difference in collaboration. >> Denu: I'll just add to that. I think a good collaboration, how do you define a good collaboration? You don't know until you're in it. And I think we've all had excellent collaborators and we've had collaborators that they're all on the take side. And you feel like you've given a lot of your time and effort but it's not reciprocated. So I think what you look for in a good collaboration is you add value to the sum of those parts. In other words, it's larger than the sum of the two. So something you couldn't do by yourself. And the same is true for your colleagues. >> Millar: Right. 

I'd like to add to that, too. I recently completed a study on partnership between K-12 institutions and higher education, and your point is precisely right. Any good partnership is one where the parties could not accomplish alone what they can accomplish together. And there's something in it for everyone. You have to have something in it for everyone. But I'd also like to say at a point based on my work as an anthropologist which is that it's useful in effective collaborations for the parties to come into it aware, think about the various disciplines that we all are trained in as having tribal identities and languages and terminology and ways of going about things, ways of thinking. If you begin with an awareness that folks trained in another discipline take a different set of things for granted than you do, and you're sensitive to those things as you interact with each other, it enables you to more effectively negotiate the differences and come up with some of that synergistic excitement as you do problem solving together. >> Paulson: And I would think it works at different levels. So I'm sure it would be wonderful to have labs 12 feet apart from each other and you're going to run into each every day. There's also what you do over at the coffee shop when you run into someone or if you hang out for beers in the evening. 

And I guess the question is, is that just serendipity? Does is just sort of happen or can you kind of build some of those kinds of interactions into the infrastructure? >> Mackie: Well, even designing the building Tom Turng and I, Tom is a WID investigator, we're assigned a similar space in the basement. It was cut in two halves. And we talked about, well, are there any things that we can share about our labs? And the more we got to talking, the more we decided there's no point in putting a wall. In fact we just decided we have a big lab, it's your lab, it's my lab, we're going to figure out how to work together. And so we actually have this space in the basement in the lower level that is essentially not Morgridge, it's not WID, it's both. And I think I would like to see much of the building have that philosophy that it's not my lab, it's all of our labs. And if you need a piece of equipment in my lab, then borrow it. As a matter of fact, Patty, speaking about environments, we just ordered a box that essentially can control the temperature from Wisconsin winters, even colder, minus 70, up to boiling water. So that would be a perfect simulation for medical devices in a steamy bathroom or left out in the car. And so that's, feel free to use that when it comes in. 

[LAUGHTER] >> Brennan: Thank you. You all heard this. [LAUGHTER] I think I'll work differently here. I think that, I have offices now in two departments already and I spend a lot of my time moving back and forth and I feel like a woman on a mission, I'm always running. The space here has places to sit down, has places to eat that are accessible and convenient, and I think that I will work differently but I have to plan to do that. My car is going to be farther away, I'm going to have to walk past Rock having his beer as I'm leaving so I might sit and have a beer, but I think building in the time, the mental space for that in my day is going to be part of my transition to the WID building. >> Paulson: Because I've heard the way some scientific-focused institutions have tried to do this is to build in lunch hours, for instance, where it's expected that people go and you don't just eat your lunch at your desk, you go and hang out with the other scientists. Is that kind of thing important? >> Denu: Oh, absolutely. And I think we've already discussed among the researchers who are going to occupy this building how we're going to do that. As you said luncheons, we've discussed. 

We've discussed beer hour which I'm sure we will get more than we will at lunch if we serve dinner and beer. And as you know, this building is really set up to provide that collisional space for people, not only within the building as my colleagues have indicated, but this is where you want to invite your colleagues from the department we're all moving from and also your other colleagues on campus. So let's meet in the WID. Let's meet for coffee at Aldo's. Let's get ice cream at 3:00 and a coffee. And that's going to happen. And I think it's actually kind of our responsibility, not only to design the lunches and so forth, but to get colleagues into this space as a meeting hall, as a meeting place. >> Paulson: I have to ask, are some of your colleagues on the rest of campus a little jealous? >> Denu: Yes, I knew what you were going to say. [LAUGHTER] Absolutely. But no one has said a bad word, so far, maybe they wouldn't say it to my face, but everyone who has come into this building has just said this is where I want to be. 

I want to come over here and have coffee with you. It's like yeah, I'll come here as opposed to Starbucks five blocks away. >> Brennan: One of the design concepts that was built into the laboratory space upstairs is lots of small gathering places but also places that are sometimes referred to as hoteling places, places where a faculty colleague could come over and work for a couple of hours. And we've been working with the IT guys to make sure that they're able to get on to the right computer networks and to make sure that they are going to have the kind of access that are needed so that the collaborations can occur in lots of parts of the building. And a great emphasis has been made among the WID investigators as we've been talking about finding ways to bring our colleagues along with us to be able to make use of the space, holding meetings here, having events here and just simply making people comfortable being here. >> Paulson: I was down in Chicago a few weeks ago giving a talk at the Google office down there, and getting a little dose of their philosophy. And I think it said that you should never be more than 70 feet away from food, I think is what it is. [LAUGHTER] And so there is a main kitchen with a cafeteria there. I'm sure with a very good chef. But they have three floors, and there are food stations very strategically located. 

>> Brennan: Have you seen our food stations upstairs? >> Paulson: I have not. >> Brennan: There's beautiful food stations located throughout the building. They must have heard that 70-foot rule. >> Millar: I'd like to emphasize again that it's not just what goes on among the researchers and all this wonderful invitational kind of space and the programming. In fact we had a conversation with that, I think you and I did recently, that we have to get this started right from the get go so that we establish new patterns of interaction among ourselves. But the point is that we also, this town center is to invitational to the community beyond the university as well. And the business community I think is going to feel much more comfortable just coming in here and working in those hotel spaces that are on that side, I think, I'm still not oriented to this building. >> Brennan: Somewhere. >> Millar: So that there's an open feeling here. I don't know how many of you have worked in these buildings where you're lucky if you run into somebody in the elevator. 

It's a completely different feeling here. >> Paulson: I want to ask about the nature of scientific discovery and if you have thoughts about what leads to great discoveries, groundbreaking discoveries. Is it genius? Is it luck? Sort of being at the right place at the right time? Is it being in the right institutional setting where you have proper support? What do you think it takes? >> Mackie: I think more often than not now it's new knowledge is really at the frontier of sciences, between sciences. No one, I think, expects now to get a degree in biology and spend their whole career working on the same problems in biology like many people did even 50 years ago. They became one particular branch of biologist and studied that right down as deep as possible. Now more and more people are willing to work between fields and find avenues to explore and use the principles from one field in a second field. I really do think that collaboration with a broad set of disciplines, as long as you have the tribal language barriers taken care of, I think is going to become more and more true. In fact, the fastest moving parts of science, for example I'm sure John has to work very hard to keep up with his field because it's moving so fast. On the other hand, and so if he stops, if he doesn't stay at the forefront, he falls behind. But at the same time, because it's moving so fast, somebody can get into that field very quickly with a new idea, new approach, and get up to the head of the class. 

And so now we're at a time when we can leapfrog from one field into another, especially in the fast moving parts of science. >> Paulson: Other thoughts on what makes discovery? >> Denu: I agree with Rock. It's bringing together two areas, two ideas of thought, two knowledge bases that never had connected before. That's where the large leaps, I think, occur in scientific discovery. You have to look outside your own lab, outside your field, to think about a greater, a larger question. And, again, back to the point I made earlier, defining a question that, you pose it to someone who's not in your field. How would you solve this problem? How would you even think about this problem? And what once you get past the barrier of learning each other's language, then you can start to have a discussion about how do we solve this together then. >> Millar: I'd like to add two points. One is that because knowledge is moving so fast, discoveries are moving so fast, that when you're in groups that have learned how to work together and trust one another, not everybody has to know all of it. You have to learn to rely on one another to keep you all moving together at the front. 

That takes a lot of trust and team building and good partnership. Another point is, and here I feel so lucky to be working with -- is this belief that high risk is going to provide potentially high payoff. I know that's an old saw, high risk, high payoff, but I think there's an awful lot to that. >> Paulson: You're talking about high risk, you're saying carrying out experiments that may just fall flat. >> Millar: We don't know if this is going to work out. This is out there on the cutting-edge. And more every day sort of science doesn't take those risks. We know that we can make little incremental improvements if we follow certain sort of processes that are already well understood. But I think what we're doing here in this WID building, WIDs building, or whatever we're calling it, really is going to have a lot of high risk, high payoff kind of features to it. >> Brennan: One of the things that I think also links us in what we believe is essential for big discoveries is students, because we're all working in a university. 

We could be working in research labs anywhere but because there's students here asking us questions, wanting to know why, sharing students across our groups, that really, to me, is when I think about what's essential for discovery it's students because we create the environment that they will go forward and discover within. And so we can't envision, I can't envision any of the collaborations here going on without students. And if you walk through the building you'll see large areas of the floor space given over to places for students to interact. >> Paulson: Do you think we're at a point right now where we need to think about science in a fundamentally new way? Is the way science done now, is it different than the way it was done 30 years ago? I know that's a very general question, but I don't know if it applies to any of your fields. Or is it kind of the same old thing but you just have new tools to work with? >> Brennan: It's always been new. So I guess there's a part of me that thinks there's always been a part of science that's done differently and whether it's bringing mathematics or computers or new materials together. So what is consistent about science is that it's never consistently the same. What I think is different now, at least in our work, is that the social construct of science, of what is knowledge, how does knowledge grow, how do we foster knowledge, is taking on more importance. And I think that institutions like this are the public presence of science making a statement that science is very important in society. >> Millar: I think there's also an emerging area of studying how science is done and understanding the processes of science. 

We're going meta on the scientific process to some degree, which is partly why we have learning sciences. >> Paulson: Any last words before we close? I think that is it. Thank you so much. [APPLAUSE]