Team Science: UGA builds support for effective teams

The university’s efforts to develop a support network for faculty seeking research funding, which run the gamut from pre-seed grants to team science workshops to hiring off-campus experts to review large proposals, are paying off. A distinguished roster of faculty members from across the Franklin College are connecting their research goals with the tools for sustainable results that make a difference:

“It’s always been my dream to have a long-term observatory in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Samantha Joye, Regents’ Professor and Athletic Association Professor of Arts and Sciences in marine sciences, part of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

“We’d go out four to six times a year and really be able to see how processes and communities are changing hand in hand and how that propagates up the food web. That’s a powerful approach that can be translated and used in other parts of the ocean, because that’s what we’re going to need to really understand how oceanic systems are responding to climate change.”

That kind of project requires expertise in a variety of fields, which means seeking collaborators from institutions all over the world and forming an effective team with them. Team science best practices—including those that go beyond the academic world—are key. The university, keeping its land-grant mission in mind, wants to lead the way in solving hard problems that don’t fall into neat disciplinary or organizational bins.

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“As a faculty member, you get into something based on the intellectual questions,” said [Dorothy] Carter, associate professor of psychology in the Franklin College. “Then you find out that on top of that you need to be an accountant, a sales person, a web designer and a social media person, and you also need to learn management and leadership skills on a bigger and bigger scale over time.”

Read the entire article from our colleagues in the Office of Research.