University hiring must be centrally organised around interdisciplinarity

The article makes some huge assumptions. Is the flowering of b100s of small flowers a necessary or sufficient way of solving "big"problems, or would unis be better off cultivating tall poppies? History suggests that big strides have come from providing talented individuals wit the means and opportunity to think big thoughts. Archimedes did not need an interdisciplinary centre to discover his principle of buoyancy. Newton benefitted from a period of isolation brought about by the plague to have time for the thoughts that lead to the Calculus. Darwin voyage on the Beagle provided the input that he needed to bring together his theory on the evolution of species. Einstein time as a patent clerk might have been a waste of his genius, however it provided time to carry out the thought experiments that lead to relativity, Even big industrial projects that pulled on multiple disciplines were often directed by an indiviual who could see the bigger picture due to their standing in their own discipline. Think the Manhattan project [Openheimer] or Apollo [von Braun]. Rather than add new layers of administrative fluff universities might be better to identify the people who can have bigger ideas and provide them with the space, resources and freedom to "see whats out there". Every university wants today is desperate to consider itself "world class" and so insists that it must be working onthe"big" problems. The net result is that they are all trying to find the same tall poppies that can seethe problem in a new way. A more effective for of leadership might be to say. "yes" it is a challenge but unless someone comes along with a detailed proposal for how to address it, its not one that we are in the business of solving. The other problem with the authors' model of convergence that I have seen in practice is that when you ignore the fields [dsciplines] the flowers therein soon whither and die.

Why does the author ignore universities as whole in pursuit of STEM? That contradicts all the stated premises as well as history and reality

How ridiculous. Interdisciplinarity has its place and where a project requires it, it will come together. No need to force it.