The University’s Interdisciplinary Humanitarian and Development Solutions Initiative (HSDI), was officially launched on Monday 22 May 2017.

The launch event and the Initiative were both designed to highlight how researchers from every discipline can contribute to solving problems in the humanitarian and development space. The HSDI will be a hub of collaboration between researchers from many fields to offer solutions to communities in need.

Every day billions of people face a lack of clean water, sufficient food, medicine, education, and employment. These are issues that a number of researchers including us in the Centre for Global Food and Resources are passionate about alleviating or even solving. However, we, like researchers in engineering, health, medicine, and many other fields recognise we could do this better or with greater impact if done in a multi-disciplinary team. The crowd at the launch of the HSDI recognised that everyone in academia has ideas and wants to solve problems and multi-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research is increasingly needed to achieve this.

Professor Tami Bond, University of Illinois, gave a key presentation at the launch event highlighting the achievements, future prospects and uses of innovative thinking.

At the Centre for Global Food and Resources we are excited by the HSDI and the opportunities it presents to us to collaborate with researchers in other fields to have the greatest impact in our local and global community.

The launch event was hosted by the HSDI Director, Dr Christian Birzer and included a key presentation from Professor Tami Bond who was visiting from the University of Illinois and a panel discussion featuring six University of Adelaide academics:

• Prof. Tim Cavagnaro (Director Soil Ecology Research Group)
• Mark Hutchinson (Director, Centre for Nanoscale BioPhotonics)
• Prof. Paul Medwell (Co-director, Humanitarian Technology Research Group)
• Vivienne Moore (Co-director, Life Course and Intergenerational Health Research Group)
• Prof. Melissa Nursey-Bray (Head of Department in Geography, Environment and Population)
• Prof. Wendy Umberger (Executive Director, Centre for Global Food & Resources)

Professor Wendy Umberger, Director of the Centre of Global Food and Resources, participated in a panel discussion at the launch.

This post was prepared by Ms Nikki Dumbrell, Research Associate at the Centre for Global Food and Resources.