The origin of the heaviest elements: an interdisciplinary approach

Bunny Clark and Virginia Brown were both advocates of community building, as a means to strengthen the scientific enterprise as a whole and to tackle specific problems of interest. In this spirit we will discuss a longstanding scientific problem---the astrophysical origins of the heavy elements---and describe how we are now on the verge of a solution due to interdisciplinary efforts connecting nuclear theory, astrophysical modeling, radioactive beam experiments, observational astronomy, and gravitational wave detections.