Twitter was abuzz this morning on the University of Michigan campus.
That's how 50 teams of U-M faculty members learned they had been awarded grants worth $60,000 dollars each to participate in a pilot program called MCubed.
The program encourages campus-wide research collaboration by teaming faculty members from different schools to share ideas.
The money will be used to hire students for a wide scope of projects. Engineers might work with nurses and architects , while physicists could work with musicians and ophthalmologists.
"It started so many new conversations about novel research topics that are really at the cutting edge of what needs to be done today to solve societal problems," says Professor Mark Burns, who chairs the executive committee for the M-Cubed project.
"They have to be new ideas that their faculty member is trying to start in their labs," Burns explains. "Some will fail miserably and some will succeed wildly, and it will be nice to know the stories behind those."
The MCubed program will distribute a total of $15 million in stages.
