Astrobiology and interdisciplinary Research: Filling the Gap

Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. Given the scope of topics astrobiology is interested in a comprehensive and integrated understanding biological, geological, planetary, and cosmic is needed. For that purpose, the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) has been established as a virtual institute that comprises of competitively-selected teams to carry out, support and catalyze collaborative, interdisciplinary research and train next generation of researchers. This talk explores the interdisciplinary nature of astrobiology research through looking at different measures. First, the team compositions of fourteen teams NAI teams (and 167 research projects) based on their members’ PhD degrees and current affiliation are presented. Second, the scholarly output of teams is analyzed based on co-authorship networks, citation analysis, and journal categories. Third, barriers to and facilitators of interdisciplinary collaborative astrobiology research and education are provided. Finally, the best practices in the community in this regard are explored.