The document discusses team science approaches for conducting research. It describes multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches. Multidisciplinarity involves researchers from different fields working independently towards a common goal. Interdisciplinarity involves joint work but researchers retain their own perspectives. Transdisciplinarity uses an integrated conceptual framework combining theories from different fields. The author believes all approaches are needed for clinical and translational research but team composition depends on the research topic and design. Effective collaboration through hands-on projects helped the author gain knowledge to achieve research goals, but inappropriate transfer of lessons between initiatives poses a challenge.

1. Dr. Obumneke Amadi-Onuoha_scripts_ 9
Three Abbreviated Research Plans Fdtn in Clinical/Trans.Rsrch_HSCI_6261_CTR
Team Science : Upon reviewing the Science of team science tutorial, I recognized that team
science is an interdisciplinary approach that promotes team base research, it seeks to understand
how researchers communicate, organize and conduct research. Its goal is to discern how study
teams connect and collaborate amongst themselves to achieve scientific breakthroughs that is
mostly attainable as a group or additional efforts. There are four distinct modules guiding the
science of team science research approach they are: the basic medical science, biomedical,
behavioral science, or clinical medical science, investigators can study topics of interest in
translational, technology, clinical management and others. Apart from interdisciplinary team
approach, Team science has the multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary Teams. In combination,
all team approaches are referred to as the “Cross-disciplinary teams”, its collaboration attempt to
combine and integrate concepts, methods, and theories drawn from two or more fields and
researchers to solve research problem. The three different approaches are described by:
 Multidisciplinarity “is a serial process whereby researchers in different disciplines work
independently, with specific perspective, and a goal of finally combining efforts to
address a common research problem” (Fiore, 2008, p.254).
 Interdisciplinarity “is an interactive process in which researchers work jointly, again
using their own discipline and specific perspective, to address a common research
problem” (Fiore, 2008, p.254).
 Transdisciplinarity “is an integrative process in which researchers work jointly to develop
and use a shared conceptual framework that synthesizes and extends discipline-specific
theories, concepts, methods to address a common research problem”(Fiore, 2008, p.254).
As a public health epidemiologist, am aligned to the four distinct modules of the science
of team science research and from an ethical view, may fit into the three cross-sectional
approaches, because all use organized efforts of some set of researchers from different
disciplines designed to achieve some common objective or goals (Fiore, 2008, p.254). The
science of teams “is rich with theory, data, and methods” (Fiore, 2008, p.272).
Translational research is a complex practice, a requirement for a diverse team science is
needed to confront and overcome the health problems oppressing our society. Teams are
effective innovators and mechanisms to translate discoveries made from bench to practice for
measurable advancements in human health. “It has been postulated that diverse teams, those that
are multidisciplinary, are the most successful in accelerating innovation” (Disis & Slattery, 2010,
p.1), but “the contributions from different disciplines are said to be complementary rather than
integrative that is, the contributions are adopted in service of some objective, but they are not
necessarily integrated” (Fiore, 2008, p.254). However, the goal of the interdisciplinary research
approach is the systematic integration of ideas, “this objective encompasses more than just
multidisciplinarity in research; it is the development of a new approach to understanding” (Fiore,
2008, p.254). In view of my disciple as a public health research expert, and to be clinical and

2. translational research expert, I consider that all sections of the teams’ science modules and
approaches to collaborating, conducting health research are required, but team’s selection would
be based of the research distinct module, the topic and study design for all research projects.
I have been favored to work as a fellow team in a health institute, my motivation streams
from having mentors that collaborated to train us through conducting a hands-on pilot projects on
a health matter. Though challenging, the mentors brought their expert skills, to work us through
the different stage such as defining the health problem to identify and population of interest,
formulate the hypotheses, and draw the methods, and others. They engaged us in different
dialogues to present our ideas and ask question, and report our findings, from that all fellow
working as a team or independently in a research project obtained information’s that supported
them to achieve their goals. The one threat that I anticipated, facing the science-of-team-science
is the inappropriate transfer of knowledge across multiple initiatives and evaluation studies. I
believe ideas and lesson learned are not effectively communicated or transferred to other
researcher who are planning or already engaged in a team science research projects(Stokols et
al., 2008, p. s86).
Reference
Disis, M. L., & Slattery, J. T. (2010). The road we must take: multidisciplinary team science.
Science Translational Medicine, 2 (22), 22cm9.
Fiore, S. M. (2008). Interdisciplinarity as teamwork: How the science of teams can inform team
science. Small Group Research, 39(3), 251-277.
Stokols, D., Hall, K. L., Taylor, B. K., & Moser, R. P. (2008). The science of team science:
overview of the field and introduction to the supplement. American journal of preventive
medicine, 35(2), S77-S89.