More than 65 universities across six global regions have joined the Global Higher Education Interdisciplinary Network (GHEIN), convened by Schmidt Science Fellows and Times Higher Education.

Senior research leaders from 67 universities across six regional chapters – 20 in Canada and United States, 12 in Asia-Pacific, 10 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 12 in the Middle East and North Africa, seven in Europe, and six in Sub-Saharan Africa – have joined GHEIN, a global network dedicated to best practice in interdisciplinary science.

Through GHEIN, senior research leaders can build cross-border partnerships and harness AI as an accelerator of science – with societal impact as the shared goal. GHEIN is the only network of its kind operating across six continents with this mandate.

“By connecting research leaders across regions and systems, we hope to build a community of collaboration and best practice. Through this network, driven by self-identified priorities and challenges, we can create stronger research environments responsive to the needs of interdisciplinary approaches and focused on delivering impact,” explained Megan Kenna, founding executive director of Schmidt Science Fellows.

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Regional chapter meetings are now under way, with several inaugural meetings already completed. What has emerged is both the diversity of regional contexts and a striking convergence around shared priorities.

Across every regional chapter, members have identified three recurring themes. The first is a demand for the structured exchange of institutional best practices – understanding what works and what does not in building and sustaining interdisciplinary research at scale.

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The second is the value of international and cross-institutional collaboration: members consistently note that the challenges facing research today – from climate change to public health – do not respect geographic or disciplinary borders, and neither should the networks that address them. Equally pressing are questions of research security and reciprocity in collaboration, ensuring that partnerships across borders are built on trust, transparency and mutual benefit.

The third is a shared conviction that societal impact must be the end goal – interdisciplinary collaboration is not pursued for its own sake, but as a means to accelerate discovery that makes a tangible difference.

Artificial intelligence has emerged as a unifying thematic focus. Members see AI not simply as a tool but as a fundamentally interdisciplinary challenge – one that demands new ways of working across fields. As Arthur Lupia, vice-president for research and innovation at the University of Michigan, observed, AI opens the possibility of “real-time mega-labs where people are doing science in a fundamentally different way”.

Jeannette Wing, executive vice-president for research at Columbia University, stressed that AI in scientific discovery “is inherently interdisciplinary – we need the disciplinary experts to validate the results of the AI models”.

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That sense of shared purpose sits alongside genuinely distinct regional priorities. In sub-Saharan Africa, members have placed particular emphasis on research commercialisation, strengthening university-industry links, and fostering interregional collaboration that moves beyond a traditional Western focus. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the conversation has centred on securing sustainable funding models and building more structured approaches to internationalisation. In Asia-Pacific, industry partnerships and researcher mobility across borders have emerged as defining priorities.

Christian Wolfrum, provost of Nanyang Technological University (NTU), said he was “excited” to be GHEIN’s regional chair for Asia-Pacific. “Working across disciplinary and international boundaries is an absolute necessity if we are to solve the world’s most complex global crises, and this aligns strongly with our focus on creating global impact at NTU. Platforms like GHEIN will be instrumental in allowing senior higher education leaders to exchange best practices while collectively shaping a more collaborative ecosystem for scientific breakthroughs between different fields,” he said.

Palesa Natasha Mothapo, director of research support and management at South Africa’s Nelson Mandela University, added: “The future of higher education and research will increasingly depend on our ability to work across disciplines, sectors and regions to solve interconnected global and local challenges. GHEIN offers an important space to strengthen interdisciplinary thinking, exchange best practices and build research ecosystems that move beyond publications towards meaningful societal impact.”

See the full list of universities in the GHEIN network

See the results of our latest Times Higher Education Interdisciplinary Science Rankings in association with Schmidt Science Fellows