Reflections on Success in Multidisciplinary, Translational Science: Working Together to Answer the Right Questions
Year: 2014
Type: editorial
Abstract: Team science is becoming a norm in modern cancer research. The National Cancer Institute encourages multidisciplinary team science through Cancer Center Support Grants, SPOREs, and other funding opportunities. As an epidemiologist who conducts team science, I am often asked what are the attributes of our multidisciplinary, translationally focused prostate cancer research team and what is it about our research environment that has led to our shared success. After being asked these questions so many times, I began to realize that not all team science proceeds as smoothly as ours. Thus, over the past several years, I have reflected on the explanations for our team's success.In this editorial, I share the factors that contributed to our team science success, including attributes of the team members, incentives to be a team member, institutional factors that support team science, and institutional and national infrastructure for team science. I point to some of the complexities that our team has experienced while conducting multidisciplinary, translational research. I highlight the need for the team to focus on the most important questions together as not to lose focus and to have the greatest impact. Finally, I mention the need to expand included disciplines to continue to move team science forward to solve cancer problems.In summary, there is great value in working together across disciplines for individual researchers, for the team of researchers, for science, and importantly for populations and patients. Team science can be exciting to conduct because of the energy synergy. Team science has complexities, but these are not roadblocks to success.No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Cancer Institute or the NIH.The author thanks the prostate cancer research team at Johns Hopkins for giving her the opportunity to participate in great team science. The author also thanks her fellow epidemiologists at Harvard for continued collaboration on prostate cancer, including for the shared testing by Johns Hopkins and Harvard investigators of basic science discoveries in populations.Dr. Platz is supported by Department of Defense grants W81XWH-12-1-0170 and W81XWH-12-1-0545, and by National Cancer Institute grants P30 CA006973, P50 CA58236, and U01 CA164975.
Author: Elizabeth A. Platz
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems and Management
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2118229983