Students interested in tapping an interdisciplinary “brain trust” of various academics, museum curators and foundations — or looking for a grant to do combined research in the arts, sciences or technologies can indulge their interests at Stanford Humanities Lab’s end-of-year open house today. The event, which will take place from 3 to 5:30 p.m. in Wallenberg Hall, will showcase 20 of its current projects and provide information about available grants for the upcoming academic year.

According to a presentation by SHL’s founder and Director Jeffrey Schnapp, the lab is “an oxymoron. It is neither a media lab nor a technology lab nor a traditional humanities research center nor a teaching support facility. It is a site for experimenting.”

Schnapp’s own diverse interests represent what he hopes to demonstrate in his lab. He is a professor of Italian literature, French and Italian and comparative literature. He speaks six different languages, and is also a semi-professional motorcycle racer. The lab looks for projects that similarly combine many different academic areas.

The lab currently has four directors. Besides Schnapp the leadership includes Henry Lowood, a curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections, the Germanic Collections and Film and Media Collections. Lowood teaches courses in history of science and technology and game studies at Stanford. Michael Shanks, classics and cultural and social anthropology professor, directs the lab as well as teaches and researches archaeology at Stanford. Associate Director William Cockayne, who oversees the day-to-day management of the lab, holds a PhD in design research and degrees in computer science and mechanical engineering, as well as multiple patents.

“We solicit ideas from faculty and students for a project that could satisfy the goals laid out by Jeffrey,” Cockayne wrote in an email to The Daily. “Along with money, SHL provides support for each project. We have a full time technology guru, and we provide outside management support. We help the projects find collaborators across campus and within industry or funding agencies, and we help the projects get their bills paid on time.

“This is often a very important problem for eminent academics,” he added.

A committee of six scholars from the humanities, arts and sciences funds a limited number of new projects each year. Each is granted $10,000 in its first year, and most projects seek outside private funding as well.

The open house will showcase a wide variety of current projects, which include Asian American Art, Life to the Second Power, Virtual Mandala and Historinet. The projects are led by an assortment of undergraduate and graduate students, professors and library curators.

SHL has a distinct set of goals that influence the projects the center chooses to fund.

“SHL is exploratory and experimental,” according to the SHL Web site. “Collaboration is an essential feature. Research bridges disciplines, linking the humanities, the sciences and technology. Projects are output-oriented, culminate in work that falls outside the traditional boundaries of humanities and include an outreach dimension for non-specialist audiences.”

While most Stanford students see a clear division between “fuzzy” and “techie” disciplines, Schnapp hopes the SHL can bridge this gap. One of the lab’s slogans, “Cross-breeding fuzzies and techies,” sums up his ultimate goal.

“We want to bring together students and scholars from science and technology fields with their humanities counterparts,” he said. “We hope to contribute to the training of a new kind of technologically literate ‘fuzzy’ and a new kind of humanistically literate ‘techie.’”