[austinjp]

Fully agree with this. I'm amazed that even in universities and similar organisations, nobody from Dept X wanders into Dept Y and simply asks "I'm working on this problem, anybody got any ideas?"

It happens, but far too rarely.

Universities understand silos. Supervisors get nervous when a student wants or needs to work with another department. There are reasons for this: supervision and grading become hard, and funding applications become complex. But this simply uncovers the depth of the silo effect.

Arts departments are at the vanguard here. You'll be far more likely to find a fashion PhD working with a biologist than you would to find a comp sci PhD working with a lawyer. Perhaps medicine gets it too, but even then it's largely the lab-based stuff like image processing. The clinical and public health worlds are only starting to gain exposure.

That's my experience anyway, hopefully others have counter experiences.