Michael O'Rourke

Michael O'Rourke
  • Professor, Executive Director of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative Center
  • interdisciplinary, communication, collaboration, integration, team science
  • Philosophy
  • AgBioResearch

WEBSITE

http://michael-orourke.com/

BIOGRAPHY

Michael O'Rourke is Professor of Philosophy and faculty in AgBioResearch and Environmental Science & Policy at Michigan State University. His research interests include the philosophy of environmental science, the nature of communication and epistemic integration in collaborative, crossdisciplinary research, and the nature of linguistic communication between intelligent agents. He is Director of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative, an NSF-sponsored research consortium that investigates philosophical approaches to facilitating crossdisciplinary research (https://tdi.msu.edu/), Executive Director of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative Center, a service center at MSU that is the principal locus of Toolbox work, and former Director of the MSU Center for Interdisciplinarity. He has published extensively on the topics of communication, interdisciplinary theory and practice, and robotic agent design. He has been a collaborator on funded projects involving environmental science education, cross-disciplinary facilitation, biodiversity conservation, sustainable agriculture, resilience in environmental systems, and autonomous underwater vehicles.

 

AREA OF EXPERTISE

  • Environmental philosophy
  • Epistemic integration and communication
  • Linguistic communication
  • Interdisciplinary theory and practice