Workshop: Coordinating the Science of Team Science

University Of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

Two coordination workshops, and supporting organizational meetings, are proposed for United States federal agencies that have programs currently funding research into scientific virtual organizations. These efforts support an emerging "Science of Team Science" that seeks to understand the sociotechnical infrastructure required for successful distributed eScience practice. Partnering with the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program, these proposed workshops will bring together agency leaders, program officers, and staff from organizations as diverse as NIH, NSF, NIST, NASA, DOE, DARPA, and DHS for dialogue about their needs, visions, and funding plans for Science of Team Science research. The first workshop, tentatively scheduled for Winter 2012, will be a planning and coordination session among key Washington, D.C.-based agency stakeholders. A second integration workshop, targeted for Spring/Summer 2013, will be a broader, more inclusive event incorporating staff from all relevant agencies and national labs. These workshops will be supported by a series of organizing meetings and will result in a draft NITRD/NSF report. Distributed eScience is the rapidly realizing future for almost all scientific inquiry. The goals of this project are to better understand the public policy underlying this transformation and to enable the super additive effects of coordinating funding efforts across multiple agencies. The promise of developing a clear, unified agenda is a more rapid maturation of both scientific methods and policies in support of eScience.