The Science of Team Science (SciTS) is a rapidly growing cross-disciplinary field of study that aims to build an evidence-base and to develop translational applications to help maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of team-based research.

The 2017 conference will review the current state of knowledge in the SciTS field, highlight applications for enhancing team science, and discuss future directions for advancing SciTS to improve the global scientific enterprise. Thought leaders in the SciTS field, scientists engaged in team-based research, institutional leaders who promote collaborative research, policymakers, and federal agency representatives will be in attendance.

This year's event will highlight the interface of the SciTS field with current hot topics and emerging trends and feature an exciting line-up of invited speakers in addition to submitted panels, papers, and posters.

Contacts:

Conference Chair
Stephen M. Fiore
University of Central Florida

Conference Co-Chair
Kara L. Hall
National Cancer Institute

Conference Event Planner
Christi Rich
Strategic Event Specialist

Featured Speakers:

The 2017 Science of Team Science (SciTS) Conference Planning Committee is pleased to announce our initial list of featured speakers for this year’s conference on June 12-14, 2017 in Clearwater, FL. We have brought together an eclectic group of experts who study and/or manage complex scientific collaborations. Our goal with this set of speakers is to help our attendees both learn about new developments in the study of teams as well as gain insights from those who have successfully addressed the challenges that arise when leading and coordinating a variety of stakeholders collaborating in science.

Keynote Speaker – Dr. James Olds

Our keynote for this year’s conference will be Dr. James Olds, Assistant Director of the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) with the National Science Foundation. In this position, Dr. Olds is responsible for helping to conceptualize and fund a variety of complex team science initiatives. Olds is also director and chief academic unit officer at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, a position he has held for 15 years. He is also the Shelley Krasnow University Professor of Molecular Neuroscience. The international Decade of the Mind project was begun under his leadership at Krasnow, which helped shape former President Obama's BRAIN Initiative.

Featured Speaker – Heidi K. Gardner, Ph.D.

Dr. Heidi K. Gardner, is a Distinguished Fellow in the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School. She also serves as a Lecturer on Law and the Faculty Chair of the school’s Accelerated Leadership Program executive course. Dr. Gardner’s research focuses on leadership and collaboration and her book, “Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos” was just published by Harvard Business Press in January 2017 (http://amzn.to/2n8zEvS). Her research has also been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Harvard Business Review and her work was awarded the Academy of Management’s prize for Outstanding Practical Paper with Implications for Management. She has degrees in organizational behavior from the London Business School, and she has been a Fulbright Scholar and an International Research Fellow at Oxford University.

Featured Speaker – Jakob Zinsstag-Klopfenstein, Ph.D.

Dr. Jakob Zinsstag-Klopfenstein is a veterinarian in tropical animal health. He is past-president of the International Association for Ecology and Health and president of the scientific board of the Transdisciplinary Network of the Swiss Academies. Since 1998 he heads a research group on human and animal health at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. Since 2011 his is deputy head of department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Swiss TPH. He focuses on the control of zoonoses in developing countries and the provision of health care to mobile pastoralists. He has helped to develop the “One Health” approach to research and practice and is co-editor of the book “One Health: The Theory and Practice of Integrated Health Approaches” (http://amzn.to/2ly0lOe). One Health is complex collaborative research effort requiring coordination amongst scientists, medical practitioners, stakeholders and citizens, in order to improve human and animal health.

Featured Speaker – Dr. Suzanne Bell

Dr. Bell is faculty with the Industrial & Organizational Psychology program at DePaul University. Dr. Bell is an internationally renowned expert in team composition and building team human capital via the selection, placement, training, and development of team members. She has published on a variety of topics including conducting actionable research on “extreme teams”, composing cohesive teams, as well as the relationship between personality and cognition and coordination in teams.

Featured Speaker – William "Brandon" Vessey, Ph.D.

Dr. William “Brandon” Vessey is currently the Deputy Element Scientist for Flight Analogs with NASA’s ISS Medical Project at the Johnson Space Center, providing scientific oversight for ground-based spaceflight analog studies. His primary research interests fall into the broad categories of teams, leadership, and creativity, with specific focus on teamwork over long duration space missions, team leadership, and collective leadership. He is co-editor of a recent scholarly volume, “Team Cohesion: Advances in Psychological Theory, Methods and Practice”, that discusses cutting edge developments in research on the attitudinal factors in teams driving successful performance (http://bit.ly/2mvnTCu).

Conference Workshops:

The conference committee has put together an impressive set of workshops for our community. These are devised as a service for our varied stakeholders in order to enhance the professional development and evolution of the science of team science. As with last year’s conference, workshops are offered as part of your conference registration and will be held on the first day of the conference.

Morning Sessions

Title: Taking the Pulse of the Science of Team Science (SciTS) with the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI)
Lead Facilitator: Stephanie E. Vasko,
AgBioResearch, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University
Co-Facilitator: Stephen Crowley
Department of Philosophy, Boise State University

Description: The Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI, formerly the “Toolbox Project”) is a philosophically-grounded, dialogue-based approach to enhancing communication and collaboration within teams and communities. For this year’s SciTS conference, TDI is aiming to support community-wide reflection by the SciTS community on aspects of the science of team science. Following an introduction to the TDI method and its use in the SciTS community the workshop will utilize an instrument tailored to allow participants to directly create knowledge based on interdisciplinary dialogue.

Improvisation for Leadership and Critical Communication with sideCoach
Lead Facilitator: Boyd Branch, Arizona State University

Description: This workshop is devised to help train future leaders to utilize performance and improvisation tools to develop personal, dynamic, data driven techniques to build consensus, encourage excellence in teammates, and make outcome independent requests of stakeholders.

Enhancing Team Science Effectiveness through Team Training
Lead Facilitator: Maritza Salazar, University of California, Irvine
Co-facilitators: Wendy Bedwell, University of South Florida; Deborah DiazGranados, Virginia Commonwealth University; Theresa Lant, Pace University; Gaetano R. Lotrecchiano, George Washington University; Kevin Wooten, University of Houston

Description: Although interdisciplinary scientific collaboration has many success stories, evidence suggests that, in many cases, teams do not always achieve the goal of successfully integrating knowledge. To improve the ability of interdisciplinary teams to generate novel solutions to complex problems, effective teamwork and team training has been identified as a critical means to enhance performance. Drawing on decades of research on team training, this workshop will present participants with evidence-based approaches to the design, development, and implementation of successful team training programs.

Afternoon Sessions

Self-Identifying the Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositional Attributes that Define the Intereach Community
Lead Facilitator: Christine Ogilvie Hendren, Duke University
Co-Facilitators: Gabriele Bammer, Australian National University; Holly Falk-Krzesinski, Elsevier

Description: This workshop addresses a new but growing SciTS-generated community of practice and research: Intereach (Interdisciplinary Integration Research Careers Hub). The Intereach community has evolved around a broadly shared need for new types of roles to be defined, recognized, institutionally supported and trained in order to optimize the success of interdisciplinary scientific endeavors. We will cover the new forms of expertise needed to address complex problems and effectively engage diverse knowledge bases and work at the interfaces between disciplines to help facilitate, optimize, and translate, research outcomes.

Understanding and Leveraging Networks for Team Science
Lead Facilitator: Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University

Description: In this workshop, attendees will be introduced to the basics of social network theories, methods, and tools. They will come away with an improved understanding of their communication and knowledge networks to help develop their scientific collaborations.

Collaborative Technologies: Facilitating How we Conduct Research Together
Lead Facilitator: Ryan Watkins, George Washington University
Co-facilitators: Anne Marino, National Academy of Sciences; Megan Potterbusch, National Digital Stewardship Resident (Open Science Framework)

Description: This workshop is devised to discuss the wide variety of technologies used to facilitate collaborative team science. Whether you are working in the same building, or collaborating with researchers around the world, today’s research teams can benefit from numerous technologies. In this workshop we review how to effectively use the varied features of these technologies that support team science.

Conference FAQs:

How can I contact the organizer with any questions?

For questions on programming please contact Steve Fiore at sfiore@ist.ucf.edu.

For hotel or event logistics questions please contact Christi Rich at christi@scienceofteamscience.net.

I would like to be a sponsor, who should I contact?

If you are interested in sponsorship, please contact Christi Rich at christi@scienceofteamscience.net to request a sponsorship packet.

I registered for the conference and no longer can attend. Do you offer conference registration refunds?

The SciTS refund policy is stated below:

Up to April 7, 2017: A full refund minus at $75 processing fee will be offered.

From April 8 - May 7, 2017: 50% refund will be offered.

From May 8 - to conference: No refunds will be offered.

Do you offer government rates for the hotel rooms?

There are a few rooms available at the governement rate. Please contact the conference event planner for more information at christi@scienceofteamscience.net.

Science of Team Science 2017