"Collaboration between mathematical scientists and epidemiologists in developing and applying new phylogenetic methods is likely to take both epidemiology and mathematical science in new and fruitful directions."
"Young scholars should seek evidence that administrators and senior colleagues who will be evaluating them for tenure--especially those with a more disciplinary focus--are supportive of interdisciplinary research and aware of the challenges of evaluating interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary science."
"People who have mathematical, computational, and statistical skills, [and] establish a collaboration and work on real biological problems, have the chance of doing some very, very significant things for human welfare." --Jaroslav Stark
I like this anonymous quote, "When you come to the edge of all the light you know and you are about to step off in the darkness of the unknown, faith knows one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."
Sometimes I stop and reflect on what I'm doing, and wonder, for example, how I ended up building agent-based models of lobster fisheries. But then I realize it's who I've always been--studying artificial worlds (usually inside a computer) to try to understand the world around me.