On March 3rd, 2022, doctoral student Victor Lugo presented at the Southeast Regional Clinical Translational Science Symposium. His presentation, titled, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Team Science”, gathered responses from over 900 researchers across the United States about their perspectives on team science.

Team science refers to collaborative research conducted by more than one individual in an interdisciplinary fashion. Lugo’s findings show that many researchers have not engaged in team science training, and that those who had received team science training engaged in collaborative research more frequently, published more frequently and with larger co-authorship teams, and valued collaboration more than researchers without training.

In his presentation, Lugo explained how team science training impacts equity, diversity, and inclusion in research. “Research conducted with multiple and diverse perspectives is necessary to solve many of the problems we face in education today,” said Lugo. “Additional resources and trainings in team science are necessary to ensure that imbalances in the power structure of members, especially those rooted in gender identity, race/ethnicity, or position type, are not allowed to dissuade members from actively contributing to team activities.”

Lugo’s next step in his research is to identify ways to improve the execution of team science practices in education. He hopes that his presentation at the symposium “inspired educational researchers to seek out more opportunities to collaborate across disciplines. After all, our results show that collaborative research has a high pay off with much to offer scientists in education.”

To learn more about Lugo’s research on team science, click here.