Photo of Dr. Carla Shatz.

Screenshot from video of Dr. Carla Shatz.

February 8th, 2016 - Stanford Medicine Scope - by Amy Adams

As director of Stanford Bio-X, Carla Shatz, PhD, not only supports campus-wide interdisciplinary research efforts, but her own research serves as an example of how teams can work in collaboration. In this video, she talks about her work identifying the molecular basis for why kids learn so quickly and so well where adults struggle.

Look at learning a second language for example. Kids can learn languages with ease and with no accent. Not so with adults. Shatz hopes to extend that window on learning into adulthood.

Shatz has used tools developed by engineering colleagues and benefits from the expertise of colleagues in immunology and stroke clinicians, among others.

“There’s no way we could make progress on this kind of a complicated question without being able to collaborate and interact with so many other people in so many other labs and so many other disciplines,” she says. “Colleagues here, faculty and students, are really thrilled to collaborate.”

More faculty talk about the value of collaboration in their work as part of the Stanford Interdisciplinary website.

Originally published at Stanford Medicine Scope Blog