Researchers at Colorado State University have never shied away from asking big questions: How do we cure disease? How do we feed 8 billion people? How do we build an equitable society? For centuries, scientists and researchers have pondered these questions and worked to address them. However, as our world becomes more connected – and inherently more complex – these questions become too large, too complex, and too multifaceted for any one discipline to tackle in isolation. It requires researchers from many areas to come together, combining their expertise across various fields, across perspectives, and across backgrounds to provide solutions to the world’s most pressing questions.

Interdisciplinary. Convergent. Collaborative. These and other similar terms have been the buzzwords across research universities for several decades. The importance of working across disciplines, connecting knowledge that had previously been siloed in a single field, is evident. But what is less clear is how to successfully bring researchers from di erent disciplines together so their collaboration is productive, effective, and impactful. Understanding and developing the strategies that guide and promote successful interdisciplinary research is encompassed within a new scientific discipline – the Science of Team Science.

CSU has been a leader in the SciTS. Dr. Jeni Cross, associate professor of sociology, has been leading e orts in studying and understanding the complex dynamics of interdisciplinary teams. In 2015, Cross and Dr. Hannah Love, a former Ph.D. student with Cross, began a longitudinal study of interdisciplinary teams across CSU to better understand factors, behaviors, and practices to promote successful interdisciplinary research and effective academic team science.

One team within this multiyear investigation into the dynamics and interactions formed in early 2003. An interdisciplinary team of researchers came together to try to answer the type of problem that sits in between disciplines: How does urbanization and consequent fragmentation of wildlife habitat impact movement, interaction, and disease spread among domestic cats, puma, and bobcats. This project brought together two principal investigators, Dr. Sue VandeWoude, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology and director of CSU’s One Health Institute, and Dr. Kevin Crooks, professor in the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology and the director of the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence. Together, they lead a team of more than 40 fellow scientists, graduate students, and undergraduates. Over the team’s 18-plus years of collaboration, this interdisciplinary research team secured more than 33 extramural awards totaling more than $5.6 million in funding, published nearly 60 peer-reviewed articles, and collaboratively trained more than 20 graduate students.

Cross and her SciTS team studied this exemplary team to understand the factors that contributed to this high level of success and, through surveys, interviews, and field observations of the team interacting, they identified several key factors and published these findings in a recent Nature Communications article. One of the study’s primary outcomes was the finding that interpersonal relationships are a crucial driver for scientific productivity. What does this look like in practice? It seems like a team where there is mentorship across all levels – faculty and students alike. It seems like a team where members turn to one another for both personal and professional advice. And it appears to be a team in which members use these trusted social networks as a pathway to building shared knowledge across disciplines, increasing their effectiveness and leading to greater scientific productivity.

CSU is applying these same SciTS learnings and principles to catalyze and accelerate interdisciplinary teaming and impact. In 2015, the Office of the Vice President for Research launched a different kind of internal investment program, known as the Catalyst for Innovative Partnerships, where interdisciplinary research teams from across all eight colleges are seeded with a critical mass of funding, up to $200,000 for two and a half years, to create and deliver novel solutions for some of our world’s most important problems.

Modeled after the active management investment models of federal agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency within the Department of Defense, the CIP program provides more than just financial backing for innovative interdisciplinary research teams. Through the CIP program, interdisciplinary research teams work closely with leadership from the Office of the Vice President for Research and other resources across campus to overcome challenges along their path to scientific impact.

One of these resources is Cross and her SciTS team. Science of Team Science has been a pivotal component of the CIP program from the beginning, with Cross and her colleagues training all participants in the principles of conducting effective team science – including the importance of interpersonal relationships.

These teams also undergo a similar mixed-methods evaluation, as in the study conducted with the aforementioned feline disease team. They are provided with real-time data and findings to increase their effectiveness. From the review of the CIP teams, Cross and the SciTS team are finding interesting trends, including that graduate students often serve as the critical glue that binds an interdisciplinary academic team together, and that women serving in leadership roles within a team leads to improved scientific productivity and outcomes.

And this investment in team science bears fruit. “The CIP program is a premier interdisciplinary program, providing significant resources to teams to empower them to pursue their passions and create new solutions for some of our most significant societal problems,” said Alan Rudolph, CSU’s vice president for research. “Our office mobilizes significant resources in facilitating these teams to achieve their dreams, and we are proud of the results of the first two cohorts that have led to substantial outcomes. The financial returns from these teams are significant, but the impacts far exceed these outcomes for our institution,” said Rudolph.

Since the Office of the Vice President for Research launched the program in 2015, CSU has invested $2.1 million into two cohorts made up of 11 different teams, which has yielded more than $23 million in research awards and nearly 170 publications. The CIP program recently welcomed its third cohort in December 2020, with five new teams joining the program. As with past cohorts, these new teams will be provided infrastructural support by the University to nurture the creation and delivery of solutions. “This unique program provides support for teams pursuing big ideas and creates uncommon collaborations for funding interdisciplinary and disciplinary depth,” said Rudolph. “The OVPR is pleased to be part of the new catalyst teams’ future success.”