The overarching goal of this workshop is to share frameworks and practices to clarify roles and responsibilities for multi-year and multi-institute convergence research projects. We draw from our experiences coaching large (2-8 dozen members) teams funded to create transdisciplinary institutes and research consortia. We chose this context because the complexity involved in teams of such scales creates additional challenges for clarifying roles and responsibilities. We believe the frameworks and practices are also applicable to other science teams of different scales and funding sources.

The specific objectives and outcomes include:

• Objective #1: Introduce the “thinking wavelength” framework and related application in convergence research team
  • Outcome #1: Participants will be familiar with the thinking wavelength framework;
  • Outcome #2: Participants will discover their personal thinking wavelength through a short survey;
  • Outcome #3: Participants will apply the thinking wavelength to specific team roles and responsibilities.
• Objective #2: Introduce the “seven characteristics of a transdisciplinary team scientist” framework, related research in team science, and application in convergence research teams
  • Outcome #1: Participants will be familiar with the seven characteristics needed on a successful convergence research team;
  • Outcome #2: Participants will consider how to identify the seven characteristics in their own teams;
  • Outcome #3: Participants will reflect on needs for roles such as process innovators and skilled communicators, and identify ways to meet the needs.
• Objective #3: Introduce the RACI framework (responsible, accountable, consulted and informed)
  • Outcome #1: Participants will explain the RACI framework and differentiate the four roles for two specific tasks on their teams
  • Outcome #2: Participants will dynamically apply the RACI framework in the sense making, decision making and action taking stages
  • Outcome #3: Participants will problem solve for team science scenarios
• Objective #4: Integrate the frameworks in a real science team
  • Outcome #1: Participants will practice their newly acquired skills in the three frameworks in a real life scenario guided with design challenges