An Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Academic Journal

The 1451 Review is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal for undergraduates who wish to connect the dots between subjects.

What Does It Mean To Be Interdisciplinary?

What do paper planes, rocket science, human hearts, and origami have in common? It seems a tricky question to wrap one’s head around, but not for Robert Lang. As an avid origami enthusiast, Lang discovered that there was more than just paper to his art. Lang saw the connections between all things. Lang applied the folding of the wing of an origami spotted beetle to solve mechanical engineering problems to NASA’s rocket ships. Today, Lang’s ideas inspire bioengineers to pack DNA strands as if folding origami.

“Almost all innovation happens by making connections between fields that other people don’t realize.” - Robert Lang.

Interdisciplinary thinking allows us to combine subjects together in new and relevant ways to solve problems that can not be solved in any other way. At The 1451 Review, we believe interdisciplinary thinking to be the key ingredient that makes innovation happen. It doesn’t just build bridges between existing concepts, but will often give birth to new ideas. Ideas that can help solve the world’s biggest problems.

Why The 1451 Review?

Students of leading academic institutions worldwide are all too often encouraged to specialize early in one field, viewing problems through one singular lens. As such, interdisciplinary thinking is a skill not sufficiently practiced by the next generation of problem solvers and world changers.

Today we face unprecedented challenges, some of the most complex problems human history has had to encounter. How do we build a sustainable future on our planet without the capacity to finance it? How can we understand the myriad of reasons which motivate political tensions between nations? How can we truly understand the world we live in without comprehending our own cognitive biases?