Breaking boundaries: ASU professor earns Big 12 honor for interdisciplinary impact

What makes a researcher stand out at a university filled with top scholars?

For David Waldman, it’s not just what he studies — it’s how he works.

Waldman, a Dean’s Council Distinguished Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the W. P. Carey School of Business, was named a Big 12 Faculty of the Year honoree, an award that each participating university gives to one faculty member who exemplifies excellence in research, innovation and education.

For Waldman, the recognition reflects something more than individual achievement.

“I consider myself to be a pretty accomplished researcher. For example, I am among the top 2% of scientists in the world in terms of impact factor,” Waldman says. “But ASU is a large university with many accomplished professors in various disciplines. So why me?”

The answer, he says, comes down to a career built on crossing boundaries.

Waldman’s research centers on leadership and organizational behavior, but it rarely stays confined to those areas. He has more than 47,000 citations, and his work draws on neuroscience, economics, finance and operations management to examine questions that don’t fit neatly within a single discipline.

“The problems that I have addressed cannot be solved by looking through a single disciplinary lens,” Waldman explains. “Instead, disciplines must be joined together in a synergistic manner."

One example is his work connecting leadership and neuroscience, studying what happens in a leader’s brain to better understand decision-making and behavior. That line of research has opened new paths for leadership development, including work on "neurofeedback" as a tool for training leaders.

Related: Neurofeedback: The future of leadership training

Despite its value, interdisciplinary research is not always the norm in academia. Waldman points to several challenges, including discipline-specific training, professional networks that reinforce those boundaries, and the perceived risk of pursuing work that may not align with traditional publishing expectations.

“Interdisciplinary research involves venturing into the unknown, (which) is risky,” he says.

For Waldman, that risk has paid off. Collaborating across fields has expanded both the reach of his research and the opportunities that come with it, including major external grants — still relatively uncommon in business school research.

He brings that mindset to his role as executive co-director of ASU’s Global Center for Technology Transfer, where he focuses on how innovations move from research to real-world use. Launched to accelerate the commercialization of university research, the center brings together expertise from different fields to move ideas from the lab to the marketplace.

Related: New ASU center to create a better, more efficient blueprint for tech transfer

Waldman’s interdisciplinary work spans organizational neuroscience and responsible leadership. It has been published in top journals and featured in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Inc. Magazine. Traditionally dominated by economics, policy and legal perspectives, the field of technology transfer increasingly benefits from insights into management and organizational behavior.

“We in the business school have profound expertise that could be applied in an interdisciplinary manner,” Waldman says. “However, we first have to be willing to take the leap beyond our typical boundaries.”

Through both his research and leadership, Waldman has demonstrated how crossing disciplines can lead to meaningful impact — for academia, industry and society.

As he reflects on the recognition, his focus remains on the next generation of scholars.

“I am very proud to have received the award,” Waldman says. “I hope younger researchers are inspired to pursue interdisciplinary research.”