In this edition of UCI Magazine, “The Future of Research,” we highlight the university’s hallmark of interdisciplinary research – from its early roots in the campus’s physical design to the recent opening of the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building, constructed to forge closer partnerships among scientists working to solve global grand challenges, such as climate change and clean energy. And while the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, we introduce UCI’s new Infectious Disease Science Initiative, designed to bring together scholars from across campus who are investigating the dynamics of contagions from COVID-19 to tuberculosis. Finally, we feature UCI’s medical humanities program, which aims to instill compassion in the study of health and medicine for the greater benefit of all humankind.