L. Michelle Bennett, Ph.D., did her postdoctoral fellowship in the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) IRP, where she was part of the team that characterized and localized the human BRACA1 gene to the long arm of chromosome 17. She became passionate about understanding the characteristics of successful research team functioning and collaboration when she worked in one of the NCI’s IRPs, the Center for Cancer Research (CCR). Dr. Bennett is currently charged with creating a new office within NCI that will work with scientists from across the organization to develop recommendations for identifying research gap areas and new research opportunities.
Overcoming complex diseases, from viruses to cancers to mental health and beyond, requires teams of people in a variety of settings. At the NIH IRP, researchers with very different expertise and backgrounds tackle the most difficult biomedical questions by working together.
If you’re planning to engage in team science or collaborations of any sort, keep these four words in mind, as they are what newly organized team members should expect on the road to success: forming, storming, norming and performing. Each step, outlined in this blog entry with insights from two leading IRP investigators, is a phase of team development, as originally introduced in the 1960s by Bruce Tuckman (See page 46 of NIH’s Collaboration and Team Science Field Guide).
What attracts talented scientists to the IRP? And, once they are here, why do they stay? One major factor is the proximity to brilliant colleagues and collaborative relationships across the spectrum of biomedical research.
Seeking to understand the key elements that contribute to successful team science, we studied a number of NIH research teams to discover the secrets of their success. The results are examined in the second edition of Collaboration and Team Science: A Field Guide, which contains new insights from individuals, teams, and organizations around the world.
When we ran the “I Am Intramural” campaign several years ago we learned that one of the major reasons that scientists are so passionate about what they do here is their ability to collaborate with exceptional researchers. We heard from many that the ability to share ideas and engage experts to brainstorm across disciplines made a difference in their ability to advance their science to the next step.
Dr. L. Michelle Bennett, Director of the Center for Research Strategy at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), has lectured extensively on the subject of “Collaboration and Team Science” in conjunction with former NIH Ombudsman Dr. Howard Gadlin. Their Field Guide has become the go-to resource for scientific teams around the world who are interested in establishing successful collaborations. We spoke with Dr. Bennett about why collaboration plays such an essential role in science today and why researchers within the IRP value access to it so highly.
This page was last updated on Thursday, January 20, 2022
