The contemporary research landscape is a collaborative and international enterprise requiring high level coordination among multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural teams. This panel will highlight federal support for team science at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) with a focus on multicultural collaborations. Further, program officers will discuss how they consider the elements of team science that are reviewed in their programs. In addition, programs that are not directly team science research, but might have elements of team science included and even sought after will be explored. Panelists will represent the NSF Global Centers (GC; NSF 24-556), Accelerating Research through International Network-to-Network Collaborations (AccelNet; NSF 23-619), Computer Science for All (CSforAll; NSF 24-555), and Growing Convergence Research (GCR; NSF 24-527) programs.

The NSF Global Centers program supports innovative collaborative international centers for interdisciplinary use-inspired research to address global bioeconomy challenges in partnership with funding agencies in other countries. This program prioritizes research collaborations that foster team science and community-engaged research, use knowledge-to-action frameworks whose rationale, conceptualization, and research directions are driven by the potential use of the results as illustrated by Pasteur’s Quadrant (Stokes, Donald E. 1997).  

The NSF AccelNet program goals are to support networks of networks at the international scale addressing grand challenges 1) to accelerate advancement of an area of science that would not be possible without international cooperation and 2) to recruit and foster an internationally competent US-based workforce trained in conducting and leading multi-team international collaboration.

The NSF CSforAll program supports partnerships and research that helps high school teachers to teach computer science, K-8 teachers to incorporate computer science and computational thinking in their classes, and school districts to create computing pathways across all grades. Specifically, focusing on both research and research-practice partnerships that foster the research and development needed to bring computer science and computational thinking to all schools.

The NSF Growing Convergence Research program supports transitioning teams from research that is multidisciplinary to research that transcends disciplinary boundaries with novel conceptual frameworks, theories and methods. Convergence research is a means for solving vexing research problems, in particular, complex problems focusing on societal needs or deep scientific challenges. It entails integrating knowledge, methods, and expertise from different disciplines and developing novel paradigms that catalyze scientific discovery and innovation.