Miller, along with Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman, former Argonne National Laboratory Director Alan Schriesheim and Illinois Institute of Technology President John Anderson, formed the C2ST in 2006 hoping to broaden the dialogue across scientific disciplines. Since then, C2ST has become the largest meeting of its kind in the United States.

“It is the only meeting of its kind, it is a special meeting,” Miller said. “So much of the world has become specialized and has become narrower and narrower. What we want to do is broaden and cross over into disciplines and have discussions between them.”

The council was inspired by the metropolitan councils on foreign policy from World War II, which were designed to combat isolationism. Miller said he hopes C2ST can act as a template for other scientific councils.

“Eventually, they will be of a common voice, not a perfectly common voice because that is not the nature of scientific groups,” Miller said, “but a common voice that we can get together and stand up for.”

The range of topics discussed at the AAAS include scientific policy to education. Scientists from around the world, as well as the general public, are encouraged to attend to better educate themselves with subject matter they may not be familiar with.

“Science and technology has unfortunately taken a back seat because there is a misnomer that you need to have some knowledge about it to understand these issues,” Senior Programs Manager at C2ST Erin Dragotto said. “Now we’re bridging the gap between the general audience.”

C2ST could expand to 20 major cities in the next five years. New issues can be discussed concerning energy, genetics and technology at each new conference across the country and allow scientists to compare research.

“When you go to one like AAAS, you tend to have much more variety that doesn’t have much impact with you directly but there definitely is a lot to learn,” said Ewen Todd, professor of advertising, public relations and retailing and presenter at the AAAS. “When you hear people speak at the receptions you possibly link that to your research.”

MSU has made efforts to improve the communication between different science departments, but because of separate funding for each department have seen that efforts to integrate each discipline is not an easy task.

“It’s a very tough problem,” Miller said. “We do things that try to cut across, however, budgets are departmental. And as long as the money is departmental, the focus will be departmental.”

The dialogue between scientists will expand with the creation of more conferences, he said.