Team science is a broad-based collaborative effort to address intellectual, scientific, and societal challenges that require leveraging strengths and expertise of specialists in different fields. Increasingly, scientists across many disciplines and settings are engaged in team-based research initiatives. Funding agencies and programs have also begun to codify team science as an outcome of large-scale grant opportunities. The success of any one team science proposal is influenced by a variety of contextual and environmental influences as well as researchers’ and educators’ ability to define and to evaluate indicators of quality and success. Therefore, understanding team science from multiple perspectives is necessary to improve science team practices for further discovery and innovation.

The goal of this workshop is to provide conference participants new to the science of team science (SciTS) with a foundation for understanding the field’s history, terminology, approaches, and research findings. The workshop also provides a broad overview to help participants learn about practical applications of SciTS research. Our goal is to enrich participants’ ability to engage in the conference sessions and networking opportunities as well as enhance their capacity to support and to conduct team science.

By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to:

• Outline key milestones that benchmark growth of the SciTS field
• Gain familiarity with key terms and definitions
• Describe contextual, structural, and procedural factors that influence efficacy of science teams
• Identify key elements for launching and planning for successful collaborations