We believe that understanding intelligence—natural and artificial, individual and collective—is a core scientific challenge of the 21st century and requires a transdisciplinary community. We aim to develop this community through three activities.
1) We will host an annual 3-week Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) at the University of St Andrews, with its Global Research Centre for Diverse Intelligences. We will recruit 40 academic participants and 5 storyteller participants; these may be grad students, postdocs, early-career faculty, and industry researchers. DISI uses lectures and salons to connect creative minds to exciting ideas. Participants develop research projects that connect them across disciplines and generate new approaches to the study of intelligences. Each year, we will measure our success in cultivating interdisciplinary projects and collaborations. We will also gather feedback on faculty and activities to improve subsequent years.
2) We will support new research in Diverse Intelligences by providing grants to the most promising DISI projects. These grants will promote cross-disciplinary collaboration and the development of new ideas. Pilot grants can be used for pilot data collection, archive access, compute time, etc. Project grants will be significant awards to support the most promising teams in completing and publishing their projects, which they will present at a subsequent DISI.
3) We will build new partnerships to secure the future of the community. We will produce a bi-weekly podcast, Many Minds, attracting participants and faculty to DISI, building public support, and engaging with potential industry and philanthropic partners. We will generate pitch materials that distill the spirit and content of the DI community. We will also host a partnership showcase connecting potential funders with leading members of the DI community, developing relationships that could lead to DISI co-funding and further research support.
