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The purpose of this chapter is to examine an evolving role in the translational science team: that of the consultant. The role of the consultant has long been a key feature of complex organizations in business and government. The consultant provides flexibility to an organization's employee base while providing specific expert knowledge and skills in a timely manner. The role of the consultant in Translational Science is innovative largely because they are attached or assigned to particular research teams, for varying lengths of tenure, to provide both basic and applied/evaluative skills to the increasingly central and defining team concept.

The establishment of Science Cafés has become a popular strategy to enhance informal yet instruction-oriented interaction between medical and scientific experts and members of the relevant local communities. The purpose of this chapter is to report on two significant findings of a mixed-methods evaluation of the SCI (Science and Communities Interact) Café. Method: The Clinical and Translational Science Award in the Institute for Translational Sciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston established an SCI Café program in 2013 to enable local residents to engage in dialogs with clinicians and researchers regarding their scientific interests and health concerns. A mixed-methods approach was used to evaluate the program. Results: The essential experience of SCI Café (SC) is updating one's knowledge of a topic. The primary comparative and analytical feature of SC participation is expertise. Expertise varies in terms of the social position of the participants: graduate student, university staff, engaged participant, topical participant, and curious participant.

This chapter proposes a research model with the potential to solve the pressing problem of the underrepresentation of Blacks in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The underrepresentation problem can be addressed at two points. The first being the graduation point where Blacks are significantly underrepresented among STEM graduates. According to 2016 NSF data, Blacks were awarded just 6.2% of US STEM degrees. This was a 16% decrease from 2004 levels. The second point is the STEM work environments is an employment climate perceived as unwelcoming for Blacks which often leads to higher attrition of mainly Black males, but Black females are affected as well. This chapter deals only with the intervention strategies that will address the underrepresentation of Black students among STEM graduates.

The need for effective STEM education interventions aimed at improving academic outcomes for Black students in STEM has been articulated by many. This chapter explores how the NIH's model of translational research can be applied to the development of interventions aimed at improving the academic outcomes of Black STEM students. Using the principles of translational research, the authors of this chapter report how they had developed a STEM teaching and assessment intervention that resulted in improving the Introductory Biology scores in one section at a historically Black college and university (HBCU) to a 72% average compared to the 50% average of all the other peer sections. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the requirements for a solutions approach to the pressing problem of the underrepresentation of Blacks in STEM fields.

The paper aims to explore the nature of initiatives and strategies of inter-organizational cooperation to cross the valley of death in the biopharma industry.

The authors conducted an exploratory case study analysis in the Biopharma Innovation Ecosystem in Greater Boston Area (USA), which is one of the oldest, and most successful IE in the US, specialized in the Biopharma domain, by conducting a round of expert interviews with key informants in the area, chosen as representatives of the different types of actors engaged in the drug development processes at different stages.

Main findings suggest that cooperation can contribute to surviving the valley of death by reducing the barriers within the drug development pipeline through the promotion of strategic relationships among actors of different nature, including the establishment of government-led thematic associations or consortia, agreements between university and business support structures, proximity to venture capitalist and the promotion of a general culture of academic entrepreneurship within universities.

The authors believe that this paper contributes to the literature by shedding light on the nature of the specific cooperative initiative the barriers in drug development and help to survive the valley of the death.

Building leadership skills among faculty in academic medicine is essential, yet professional development programs focused on leadership are not always attentive to the needs of faculty on diverse career pathways or at differing career stages—nor are they often rigorously assessed. Evaluations commonly focus on participant satisfaction and short-term learning but not behavior change and institutional impact, which are difficult to assess but arguably more meaningful. Given the substantial time and money invested in these programs, more rigorous evaluation is critical.

The authors evaluated an intensive, shared leadership-focused training program for early-career and mid-career faculty, offered by the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine over the course of a year. They administered a pre/post-program assessment of confidence in key skill areas, and conducted semi-structured interviews with 21 participants between 1–4 years after program completion.

Participants in both programs showed statistically significant improvement (p < 0.001) on every item measured in the pre/post-test. Analysis of the interviews revealed indications of substantial behavior change as well as institutional impact. The evaluation also suggested particular benefits for female professionals.

The authors conducted a long-term assessment of leadership training focused on career pathway and career stage and found that it (a) prompted both positive behavioral change and institutional impact and (b) suggested benefits for female faculty in particular, which could potentially help to eliminate gender-based disparities in leadership in academic medical centers.

In this chapter we discuss attitudinal and affective factors in the context of science teams. We review some of the key findings on conflict, trust, and cohesion in teams and discuss the differentiation between team-related and task-related definitions of each. In so doing, we discuss their relevance to team effectiveness in science teams and provide guidance on notional areas of research for understanding how these are related to effectiveness in science teams.

This study aims to investigate individual motivations for participating in collaborative health knowledge producing teams (KPTs), as well as satisfaction gained by participation in science teams. The authors focus on understanding motivators across team types, levels of engagement and alignment within and across teams and need satisfaction in a total of six science teams. Areas of strong congruence and divergence of motivating factors can be aligned across (i) learning and professional growth satisfaction, (ii) respect, collegiality and enjoyment satisfaction and (iii) accomplishment and discovery satisfaction. Levels of satisfaction are hierarchically mapped showing their relation to more external and communal foci to motivations that seek satisfaction of individual needs.

This mixed method comparative study uses data from the motivation assessment for team readiness integration and collaboration (MATRICx) tool and themes generated from semi-structured interviews. This methodology provided a means to compare a hierarchy of motivations against levels of collaborative engagement, as well as individual needs satisfaction and ultimately the identification of higher and lower-level motivations related to self and external foci.

The findings indicate that there are both similarities and differences in motivations in different health science teams when one compares biomedical, education and policy teams. A comparison of MATRICx data from across team types and teams suggests areas of strong congruence as well as areas of divergence in motivation factors.

The paper and its findings use a novel tool along with qualitative research techniques to identify motivation in KPTs and uses these data to understand what type of needs satisfaction are important across three areas of health science teaming. Our research informs team leaders, facilitators and consultants about the important motivations team members have entering teams and has the potential to provide a blueprint to ensure peak performance as individual team members seek to address their ever-growing professional needs.

This commentary describes (1) the role of group communication research in Communication Departments and (2) reflects my personal experiences in conducting group and team research with international and interdisciplinary group scholars. I describe the challenges associated with research funding, research space, participant pools, and research technology. Additionally, I address international and interdisciplinary influences (i.e., team science, university/government/industry collaboration) on communication research. This chapter concludes by identifying interdisciplinary contexts for group and team communication research including children and teens' groups, healthcare teams, and robot–human teams.

The training of doctoral students has traditionally focused on the academic imperatives associated with research training with less attention accorded to developing other professional skills that are likely to facilitate broader employment opportunities after graduation. The reality is that a lower proportion of PhD graduates than was the case will go on to work in academia (https://go8.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/the-changing-phd_final.pdf). And increasingly, careers outside of academia which offer alternative career pathways for new graduates encompass roles involving such high level skills as problem-solving, critical thinking, project management, leadership, innovation, and enterprise. Some would argue that the Australian PhD is at risk of failing to meet the employment challenges of the twenty-first century doctoral graduate. But how are doctoral students to acquire transferable abilities if their doctoral program is focused largely on developing research skills? (This is not of course to argue that there aren’t any programs seeking to address these questions. Rutgers University in the United States, for example, has implemented a program with an emphasis on leadership and other transferrable skills.) Indeed the discussion begs the question what is the purpose of the PhD? While this question appears to be under consideration globally, this chapter attempts to address it from within an Australian context.