INSciTS Board of Directors

 Wayne T. McCormack

President

[email protected]

Dr. Wayne T. McCormack is a Distinguished Teaching Scholar and Professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine, where he directs training programs related to clinical & translational science and biomedical research career development.  As part of the TL1 training grant component of the UF Clinical & Translational Science Award that he leads, he has developed a novel team-based research training program for PhD and dual degree students.  His research interests all focus on education-related projects, including competency-based assessment of science PhD training, team science training, team-based learning, responsible conduct of research training, and career outcomes.  Dr. McCormack is a founding member of the Science of Team Science community, the founding chair of the INSciTS Team Science Education and Training special interest group, past-president of the Team-Based Learning Collaborative, and past-chair of the Graduate Research Education and Training Group of the Association of American Medical Colleges.  He looks forward to working with the board to provide guidance related to team science education and training.

Heather Billings, Ph.D., MA

Immediate Past President

[email protected]

Heather Billings, Ph.D., is Director of Faculty Development for Mayo Clinic College and Science, Administrative Lead for Team Science Education and Training for the Center for Clinical and Translational Science, and Course Director for Strategies for Success in Team Science in the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Specific to team science Heather is actively involved in the development, application and evaluation of methodologies to increase multidisciplinary team cognition and outcomes. Recent work has involved referencing conceptual frameworks to guide the identification and delivery of “just in time” team science education and resources to advance multidisciplinary effectiveness and outcomes across disciplines and organizational boundaries. She is currently working with the CTSA Team Affinity group to develop and disseminate a framework of individual and team competencies through which to guide education and training as well as assessment and evaluation processes. Heather has served as Co-Host for the 2016 SciTS conference, Chair of the Evaluation Committee 2018-2020, Chair of InSciTS Special Interest Groups, Member of InSciTS Membership Committee and member of its annual conference 2017-2020.

Margaret Browne Hunt, Ph.D.

 [email protected]

Margaret Browne Huntt, Ph.D., is the Assistant Director for Strategic Research Initiatives and Chief Diversity Officer at the Cancer Center at Illinois. Her proven administrative and facilitative skills have enabled the integration of vision, decision-making, and resource allocation.

Dr. Huntt builds collaborative research networks by supporting the center’s strategic research activities, partnerships, and special projects. She aids in assessing and developing numerous research and strategic thematic areas. She works with organizational stakeholders to determine infrastructure needs and implements processes to promote the success of those collaborations. She leads the administration of the strategic planning process, the development and execution of all new programs, and engagement opportunities with clinical partners.

Dr. Huntt works with research teams and working groups to develop and disseminate frameworks to enhance individual and team competencies through the ideation to evaluation phases. She helps to facilitate the activities of interdisciplinary research teams that incorporate aspects of organizational sciences.

Yi Bu

[email protected]

Assistant Professor in Data Science at the Department of Information Management, Peking University, China. Before joining Peking University, Yi completed an undergraduate degree in Information Management and System from Peking University, an M.S. in Data Science, and a Ph.D. in Informatics from Indiana University Bloomington. Yi was a research fellow at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI), Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO), and the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Illinois, working with Professor Dashun Wang. Yi’s research includes the application aspect of big data analytics, with a particular focus on scholarly data mining. Yi serves as an editorial board member of the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Nature Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, and the Journal of Information Science, an advisory board member of the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, and the chair of the SIG-STI (Science & Technical Information) of ASIS&T
Deborah DiazGranados

Deborah DiazGranados, Ph.D.

Treasurer

[email protected]

Deborah DiazGranados, PhD is an Assistant Professor and Organizational Psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. She serves as Director of Evaluation and Co-Director of Team Science for the Wright Center. She is a Co-Investigator on the $20 million Clinical and Translational Science Award awarded to VCU by NIH. Her research focuses on decision making in uncertain contexts, collaboration for producing innovation, and leadership in complex work environments. Dr. DiazGranados' scholarly achievements to date include over 50 scholarly publications, and more than 150 presentations to national and international audiences. She serves as the Consortia Chair for the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Program Chair for the 2020 IN. Dr. DiazGranados'  research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Factors, Academic Medicine, Journal of Interprofessional Collaboration, Small Group Research, Human Resource Management, Journal of Management, Current Directions in Psychological Science, American Psychologist, Clinical and Translational Science and The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. Dr. DiazGranados received her B.S. degrees in Management and Psychology from the University of Houston and her M.S. and Ph.D degrees in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida.

W. Christopher (Chris) Lenhardt, M.A., M.Sc.

[email protected]

W. Christopher (Chris) Lenhardt, M.A., M.Sc., is a senior research scientist in the Earth Data Science group at the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI). RENCI, a data science institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, works to develop and apply advanced data science to solve challenging research and societal problems. At RENCI, he leads or coordinates several projects composed of diverse teams of researchers in areas related to human interactions in the environment. His academic training spans multiple disciplines including political science, international relations, digital curation, and information science. Lenhardt draws on these experiences to inform his research interests that include using sociotechnical concepts to study the development of research information infrastructure. Of particular focus is the interaction between information technology, knowledge management, and team performance. Lenhardt’s interest in these topics also leverages his experience managing NASA-funded earth science data centers, such as serving as director of the Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) for Biogeochemical Dynamics at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and deputy director of the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) at Columbia University. Lenhardt has been an author or co-author on published papers including digital curation; ethical, legal, and societal implications of technology; open science; stakeholder alignment; and information science. Lenhardt has held leadership roles in national and international organizations related to promoting the curation, sharing, and re-use of digital scientific objects including serving as president of ESIP (Federation for Earth Science Information Partners), chair of the Foundation for Earth Science board of directors, and co-chair of the CoopEUS strategic collaboration board. CoopEUS was an EU and NSF joint project to promote aligning scientific cyberinfrastructure. He currently serves as a member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Science Advisory Board. He looks forward to working with the Board to help grow and sustain INSciTS, for example representing INSciTS in the Earth and environmental science communities of which he is a part, and working to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout the research enterprise.

 

Gaetano R. Lotrecchiano, EdD, PhD

 Past President

 [email protected]

Gaetano R. Lotrecchiano, Ed.D., Ph.D. graduated from the Graduate School for Education and Human Development in 2012 and was granted a degree from the Executive Leadership Program in the Human and Organizational Learning department. His area of expertise is in team science which is the study of team dynamic in science teams. He focuses on motivation in knowledge-producing teams, complexity leadership, and transdisciplinary theory and learning. His pedagogy for developing translational scientists stresses the growing need for cross-disciplinary skills and agency for change as interdisciplinary brokers. Since the completion of his doctorate he has served the university in a number of capacities including developing the team science curriculum in the School of Medicine and Health Science, developing the PhD in Clinical Translational Health Science and serving as its Director of Doctoral Candidacy. Dr. Lotrecchiano is a recipient of the Morton A. Bender Teaching Excellence Award and is a past chair of the GW University Society of Distinguished Teachers. In addition to his publishing and editorial record, Gaetano recently published a book entitled Communication in Transdisciplinary Teams and is preparing a manual of learning interventions to accompany his psychometric assessment tool, the Motivation Assessment for Team Readiness Integration and Collaboration (MATRICx).

 

Dayan Ranwala, PhD

[email protected]

 

Damayanthi (Dayan) Ranwala, PhD, is Director of Research Development in the Department of Bioengineering, Clemson University, South Carolina.  Prior to joining Clemson in 2023, she was an Associate Professor in the Medical University of South Carolina, and Associate Director for Team Science Program and Pilot Project Program for the South Carolina Clinical and Translational Research Institute.  She has been involved in many aspects of the team science initiatives at the local and national levels primarily in developing Team Science education and training initiatives for the translational science teams.  She has served the INSciTS in different capacities over the last several years.

Dr. Ranwala has been a member of the Team Science Affinity Group that led to develop and disseminate a framework of individual and team competencies.  Building upon that work, she is currently serving as a co-leader for the INSciTS Education and Training SIG’s Working Group “Mapping Team Science Competencies for Translational Science Teams Across the Lifespan” to develop team science competencies for three specific groups (Trainees and Faculty; Clinical Research Professionals; and Community Partners) and Co-Chair for the Workgroup’s Faculty and Trainees Group to identify relevant importance of the competencies and the level of mastery needed for individuals at each stage of their career progression.  Findings of this work will help to develop education and training curricular for the three groups as well as assessment of team science competencies of the individuals.  In addition, she served as the Co-Chair for the national CTSA Institutional Readiness for Team Science Workgroup, Academic Promotion and Tenure Workgroup, Lead for the Great CTSA Team Science Contest, and Chair for the Contest Judges/Judging Criteria Committee and helped to disseminate the findings.  Dr. Ranwala has served as a faculty advisor, mentor, and scholar promulgating the concepts of Team Science.  Further, she has served as planning committee member and an evaluation team member for the SciTS Conference committees.

Dr. Ranwala looks forward to working with the INSciTS Board to further advance the team science education and training to a broader community representing other disciplines such as bioengineering.  Understanding of team science competencies and their relevance to specific group and discipline may improve team cohesion and functioning leading to more effective teams and outcomes.

Betsy Rolland, PhD MLIS MPH

[email protected]

 

Betsy Rolland, PhD MLIS MPH, is the Director of Team Science + Research Development for the Carbone Cancer Center and the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds a PhD in Human Centered Design & Engineering and a Master of Library & Information Science, both from the University of Washington, and a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Before coming to the UW-Madison, Dr. Rolland was a post-doctoral Cancer Prevention Fellow at the National Cancer Institute, where she conducted an evaluation of a cancer prevention-focused research network and studied the grants-making process. Her research focuses on coordination and collaboration in team-science projects, including how to design, build, and evaluate infrastructure to support complex, multi-investigator initiatives. She has recently begun exploring ways to use the theories of Implementation Science to design, develop, evaluate, and disseminate team-based interventions in clinical and translational research and is currently the Guest Editor for a themed issue of the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science (JCTS) focused on this topic. Dr. Rolland also serves as the Principal Investigator for the Cancer Center Cessation Initiative (C3I) Coordinating Center, an NCI Moonshot-funded project focused on integrating smoking cessation services into clinical care at 52 NCI-designated cancer centers and as the co-I for Team Science on a new NIDDK-funded Interactions Core for the Collaborating to Advance Interdisciplinary Research in Benign Urology (CAIRIBU) initiative. Her research and applied work feed one another and keep her grounded simultaneously in the research and praxis of team science. She is also a member of the National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP).

Tayana Soukup, PhD

 [email protected]

 

 

Dr. Soukup is a chartered psychologist accredited by the British Psychological Society and specialised in team science; she is also a fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health in the UK.  While based at Imperial College London, Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Soukup collaborates widely and holds several different roles internationally, including Assistant Professor in Team Science at the Dept of Epidemiology, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA; Senior Fellow in Multidisciplinary Teams at the School of Health at University of Suffolk, UK; and Senior Fellow in Implementation Science in the Health Services and Population Research Department, King’s College London, UK.  Dr. Soukup is also an editorial board member for the scientific journal Frontiers in Psychology section of Organisational Psychology.

Dr. Soukup work is focused on studying (multidisciplinary) teams, including development of novel methods for evaluating and improving team work (in real-time and using video-based team analytic methods), psychometric tool development, and development and delivery of training/teaching (internationally) to clinical teams in team science.  Together with her colleagues, Dr. Soukup has scientifically studied the workings of cancer teams in the last 10 years, and has built an extensive evidence-base (>50 outputs) – with evidence on the factors that promote and those that hinder team work.  For example, Dr. Soukup’s paper on communication in cancer teams received an award at the Science of Team Science conference (2018) for excellence in research approach, clarity, innovation, and significance for advancing important topics in team science.  Dr. Soukup has also designed and is currently piloting, so far, the largest national team programme in cancer care in the UK with 73 teams taking part.

One of the main goals of Dr. Soukup’s work is contributing to research on how clinical teams communicate and make decisions by translating evidence into practice and providing means through which to prevent and mitigate unintended detrimental consequence of human factors (e.g., cognitive biases, fatigue, errors).  The strength of Dr. Soukup’s scientific approach is in a unique mix necessary for the study of teams.  These underpin the appreciation that a combination of different approaches are needed to drive understanding and improvement, identify inefficiencies and preventable errors, design appropriate methods and assessment tools, develop effective innovations, and implement/promote their uptake.

Pips Veazey, Ph.D.

Secretary

[email protected]

Pips Veazey, Ph.D., is the Associate Project Director for the Alaska Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), a statewide program funded by the National Science Foundation and the State of Alaska aimed at increasing research capacity. She is also the lead and creator of Vis Space, a high-resolution visual environment designed to promote conversations about complex problems, develop creative solutions and enhance team development. Her research interests include the development and implementation of interdisciplinary research teams, the interaction between teams and technology, and team science leadership. Building on academic foundations in psychology (BA, Bates College) and oceanography (MS, University of Alaska, Fairbanks), she completed an interdisciplinary doctoral degree in team science leadership at UAF, examining the competencies required to be an effective leader of large interdisciplinary team science projects. She carries a passion for synthesizing and implementing team science research to create more effective science teams and works with numerous interdisciplinary teams to help propel innovative and transformative research.

Chris W. Wiese, Ph.D.

[email protected]

Chris Wiese, Ph.D., is the Area Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He also serves as the Team Science lead for Georgia’s Clinical and Translational Science Alliance, which puts on a Team Science Skills Series to train all researchers on how to work in teams. This team has also developed a Team Science Skills Toolkit, freely available for anyone interested. As director of The Foundation Lab, he conducts multidisciplinary research that focuses on facilitating positive team dynamics and improving worker well-being. The lab engages in research with cognitive psychologists (e.g., spatial navigation), molecular biologists (e.g., Alzheimer’s Disease), biomedical engineers (e.g., physiological indicators of stress), and computer scientists (e.g., augmented/virtual reality). He consults with several organizations to improve their team dynamics and has been a part of several federally funded research projects to improve teamwork. He is looking forward to working with the INSciTS Board and its members in conducting and promoting great team science. 

Rebecca Woodland, Ph.D.

[email protected]

My scholarship is in the science of collaboration.  I investigate, distill, and interrogate the theory and practice of inter-organizational, intra-organizational, and interpersonal collaboration.  I have developed and published metrics, tools, and approaches for the assessment and measurement of collaboration, and I study the quality and effects of collaboration in a wide range of contexts (e.g. P12 schooling, health and social service networks, and large-scale grant projects).  Please see my 2016 publication: Evaluating PK-12 professional learning communities: An improvement science perspective. American Journal of Evaluation. (37) 4, 505-521. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1098214016634203 for a closer look into the connections that I make between the study of collaboration and the science of team science.  

I have chaired the American Evaluation Association’s Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building TIG, Social Network Analysis TIG, and P12 Educational Assessment TIG.  I serve as Vice-Chair for the Amherst Personnel Board and have provided policy governance consultation to the Executive Board of the Massachusetts School Counselors Association.  I am on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Evaluation and Evaluation and Program Planning, and served on two editorial boards for SAGE.  For several years now, I have served as Co-PI of Computer Science for ALL, a Research-Practice Partnership project sponsored by the National Science Foundation.  In this partnership effort, I lead the team that studies the dynamics and structural attributes of professional learning communities and their effects on instructional practice and student learning.

 

Former Board Members and Officers

  • Maritza Salazar Campo, PhD, University of California, Irvine, Founding President and Board member (2018-2019), Immediate Past President (2019-2020)
  • Holly J. Falk-Krzesinski, PhD, Elsevier and Northwestern University, Secretary and Board member (2018-2019)
  • Kevin Wooten, PhD, University of Texas Medical Branch, Treasurer (2018-2019) and Board Member (2018-2020)
  • Kara Hall, PhD, National Cancer Institute, Board Member (2018-2019)
  • Julie Thompson Klein, Wayne State University, Board Member (2018-2020)
  • Gaetano Lottrechiano, George Washington University, Board Member (2018-2021), President (2019-2020)
  • Andi Hess, Arizona State University, Board Member (2018-2021), President (2020-2021)
  • Shalini Misra, Virginia Tech, Board Member (2018-2021)
  • E. LaVerne Manos, DNP, University of Kansas Center for Health Informatics. Board Member (2019-2022), Treasurer (2019-2021)
  • Darshana Shaw, Marshall University
  • Steve Fiore (Board member 2018-2023, President 2021-2022)
  • Zaida Chinchilla Rodriguez (Board member 2018-2023)
  • Tony Lingham (Board member 2020-2023)
  • Katie Plaisance (Board member 2021-2023)