The rise of interdisciplinary and no-boundary engagement has created a need to train the next generation of No-Boundary Thinking (NBT) scholars and practitioners. So it is essential that students be provided with NBT experiences in the classroom and through group-based research experiences. Our no-boundary community has offered a first generation of classes to provide an environment where students can engage in no-boundary projects and exercises, and reflect upon the nature of this type of thinking and problem solving. The following five classes were first offered in fall 2015 through spring 2018 at four institutions for undergraduate and graduate students. The experience has been enriching for both students and faculty. In all cases the courses have been well received by the students and institutions, and most instructors plan to continue to provide the classes as permanent offerings. We describe the early offerings of each class.

Ideal healthcare should provide prevention and treatment strategies in the context of individual variability. The promise of genomics and big data for understanding the complex disease etiology and development of treatment strategies for translating research findings in a laboratory setting to the bedside requires a paradigm shift in how we conduct biomedical research. The take-home message from the Human Genome Sequencing Project is the need for a bold vision, even in the absence of a clear path. The No-Boundary Thinking (NBT) approach that advocates a scientific dialogue among individuals with varying expertise in a “discipline-free” manner at the problem definition stage is a pragmatic approach to leverage big data for precision medicine. Genomics big data as it pertains to understanding the molecular function of genes and proteins is discussed in this chapter. We also discuss the challenges in the adoption of NBT to genomics research.

One fundamental project of biology is to determine which groups of organisms are “the same” and which are different, for taxonomic purposes but more fundamentally so that one can make general, meaningful claims about specific groups. Traditional bifurcating taxonomies have been and remain useful. However, what was designed to name unchanging “natural kinds” of relatively large organisms with distinct morphologies is not adequate for grouping and dividing very small organisms, reticulated histories, endosymbiosis, horizontal gene transfer, asexual reproduction, or ecosystems. Biological explanations need to be flexible enough to account for hierarchically embedded processes and structures at vastly different scales, from the molecular to the global. Modern biology has moved beyond naming things, and biological explanations now require more sophisticated ontologies.

This is a reflection on the international computing community’s efforts to define itself as a discipline and inject computing into the core education of everyone. Their aim is to prepare us for the technology-based society in which we work and live. Scholars who aim to explore the nature of No-Boundary Thinking can learn from the self-reflection of the computing discipline, and No-Boundary Thinking might be an essential solution for the effective integration of computing into the core body of knowledge needed by every educated individual. These connections might also assuage the recent frictions between STEM and liberal arts scholar educators.

What is No-Boundary Thinking (NBT)? Is it a philosophy term or a science term? Why do we need it? Since 2013, the NBT national network has had many discussions and today wants to have a book to include some of the NBT group members’ thoughts. Some may affect NBT, some may not. Still, we would like to put it all together.