Classically, the brilliant researcher worked alone; pondering and experimenting, until "Eureka!"

Today, collaboration is the word. In institutions, research teams are key and include research associates, postdocs, and graduate students. For the Senior Investigator, there are colleagues around the world with whom to share ideas or take part in larger projects. That, in turn, leads to the problem of communication. There is mail or telephone and today, there is fax. Each has its disadvantages. Mail is slow, phone is expensive, and fax is not interactive. Even email does not allow for the kind of interaction that leads to ideal communication.

There is a new means of collaboration that addresses many of these needs and concerns, and provides a new, hi-tech, highly satisfying means of accomplishing one?s professional goals. This new method is research collaboration via MOO.

MOO stands for MUD, Object Oriented. A MUD is a multi-user domain, similar to a chat room, in which many people from all over the world, can meet and talk simultaneously. Object oriented means that one can create objects, pick them up, put them down, hand them to others, etc. A classic example is BioMOO (described in papers by Leifer and by Sansom). BioMOO is a virtual meeting place for biologists and provides a framework for classes, socialization (of the kind that takes place at professional society meetings and leads to collaboration), and collaboration.

Table 1 lists a large number of educational MOOs, that is, those peopled by serious professionals, as opposed to those whose stated goal is strictly social or devoted to games. In BioMOO and Diversity University one is likely to meet biologists. The other educational MOOs may focus on other areas of professional life but one never knows.

Table 1.

Sites for Table 1 were obtained from The GNA Forum.

The first issue to address is: How do you find people with whom you might wish to collaborate? Let me suggest a number of strategies.

First and foremost is BioMOO. Joining is easy. You can build an office or a lab (see Leifer), which becomes your home base. Drop in and see who is visiting. It is easy to make friends. Almost by definition, those who are visiting are there because they like the medium and are happy to meet new people. Type "info" and find out a visitor?s background and, usually, email address. Look in the research directory to find people with your particular interest and contact them yourself.

More and more, groups are running conferences online. As an example, Virtual Environments International (VEI) has a permanent conference center and recently ran one meeting on Glycoscience and another on Molecular Modeling. CTI Biology ran a Conference on University Biology Education, using BioMOO for a large group discussion. You can attend such conferences from your desk, which is much cheaper and easier than traveling. You can interact in BioMOO or an online conferencing facility. The intimacy of the medium makes it much easier to "speak up" (something you might not feel comfortable to do in a big auditorium). Plus, in MOOs, collaborations can be easily set up because you can "page" the speaker, i.e., whisper privately, "meet me later, I have some ideas", even while the public discussion is underway.

A number of courses are offered with many prominent leaders in the field as faculty, and many advanced professionals as students. For example, "Principles of Protein Structure" sponsored by Birkbeck College, UK, "Biocomputing" through the Virtual School of Natural Sciences (VSNS), "Bioscience Resources on the Internet" sponsored by the Internet Biologists, and "Structure-Based Drug Design" through the Virtual School of Molecular Sciences. Attending such a course brings you in contact with many people from around the world with whom you might collaborate. To broaden the scope, the Globewide Network Academy (GNA) has a catalog of approximately 15,000 online courses, in all areas, including many in biology.

Dr. Ofer Markman at the Hebrew University and BioMOO, has established the Virtual Instutute of Wet Biology (VIWB). The goal is to put people together in order to form research collaborations. The thrust is particularly toward those in small colleges or poorly funded institutions, whose capacity to form the sort of large groups, in-house, described above, is greatly limited. Via the VIWB they can find each other, form a collaborative association, and sharing via Web and MOO, not only ideas but supplies, equipment, or parts of a whole project. In short, VIWB is a decentralized, geographically separate but close-working association.

Assume you have found someone with whom you want to work, possibly via the MOO itself, but perhaps through usual channels of names from journals, meeting attendance, or word of mouth. These days, don?t forget newsgroups. Groups like bionet.microbiology or bionet.molec-model provide names and interests which you might like to pursue.

The next step is to meet in your office in BioMOO. Set a day and time and have a meeting. This brings together, easily and inexpensively, multiple people from multiple places, on schedule or at a moment?s notice, as often as you want. Discuss the latest data, a hot paper, or plan new experiments. It has the immediacy of full, interactive dialog and the added advantage that you can easily record the session for future reference.

You can invite famous guest lecturers to address your group. You may or may not pay an honorarium but you will surely save on travel and hotel expenses. You can present seminars featuring your findings and new techniques, more easily and to a wider audience than by going to one institution that might invite you to speak in person.

The number of people doing research is increasing. The likelihood of funding is decreasing and time is forever in short supply. Yet, the need for people with ideas to get together is as great as ever. One readily available means of solving this dilemma is research collaboration via MOO.