NC TraCS was one out of 11 winners in The Great CTSA Team Science Contest, garnering the top prize in the category of Collaboration & Engagement. The winning submission was Engineering Solutions to Health Problems, a workshop designed to develop working relationships between engineers and clinicians.

The workshop, conducted in 2015, was executed by a planning committee that included representatives from NC TraCS, RTI International, NC State University, NC Agricultural & Technical University, and NSF ASSIST. The group designed a curriculum, conducted the workshop and monitored team activities following the workshop.

The workshop was the first of many research theme-oriented activities that followed, including mHealth, precision medicine, pediatrics, and opioid research. Dr. Marla Broadfoot, a freelance science writer who has written about many of these projects, submitted the winning entry.

The Process

The Great CTSA Team Science Contest was launched in August 2018, with the purpose of finding the best ideas across CTSAs for encouraging better multidisciplinary team science activities.

Five schools were represented on The Great CTSA Team Science Contest planning committee: Virginia Commonwealth University, Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, Cornell Weil, and MUSC. The committee received 170 stories and the winners will be announced at the 2018 CTSA Program Fall Meeting held on October 22-23 in Arlington, VA. The PIs of the winning schools will receive trophies and bragging rights at the meeting.

Each story submission was sent to a judge at random. The judge had an opportunity to recuse themselves for a project they (or their CTSA) was involved in. Each project was scored based on importance, innovation, and impact by at least three judges. The judges also categorized the kind of team-based work that was going to be exhibited as belonging to Collaboration & Engagement; Methods & Processes; Informatics; Lifespan Integration; and Workforce Development, or some other category that was described by the judge.

To learn more about the ESHP workshop, research development in the workshop setting, or other support for interdisciplinary team-based activities, visit the NC TraCS Team Science home page: https://tracs.unc.edu/index.php/services/team-science.

The Winners:

• Top Overall Score - University Of Washington, Engineering innovation in health: interdisciplinary teams solving unmet health challenges with technical solutions
• Top Importance Score - New York University School Of Medicine, Finding collaborators through data: the data catalog collaboration project
• Top Innovation Score - Medical University Of South Carolina, Smartphone app improves communication and teamwork in trauma care
• Top Impact Score - University Of Texas Med Br Galveston, Team science competency model established to provide evidence-based foundational skills to the CTSA consortium
• Methods/ Processes Category - Mayo Clinic Rochester, Area stakeholders build network for promoting health and continuous learning
• Informatics Category - Virginia Commonwealth University, Deap: The diabetes engagement and activation platform
• Integration Category - University Of Miami Miller School Of Medicine, Stop, drop and roll: Firefighters and scientists team up to put out cancer risks
• Collaboration/ Engagement Category - University Of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Successful research collaborations follow “engineering solutions to health problems: a workshop
• Workforce Development Category - Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Translational research scholars learn to form, storm, norm and perform!
• First Submitted Story - State University Of New York At Buffalo, Promotion and tenure for team science faculty: A case report
• Last Submitted Story - University Of Michigan At Ann Arbor, Mcubed brings teams together