Team Science Intern

Department Description:

The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) is a living laboratory that creates cyberinfrastructure for the benefit of science, business and society.

What makes us so “renaissance”? Our work isn’t just about solving known problems. It’s about unlocking human potential.

• We accelerate research.
• We help overcome barriers to make research faster, stronger and more creative.
• We advance the state-of-the-art. Not just in what machines can do, but what people can do with machines.
• We transcend boundaries.
• We foster inclusivity, promote diversity and collaborate across disciplines to enhance science, engineering, art, the humanities and commerce.

A research institute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, RENCI links people, data and resources across the UNC system, Duke University, Research Triangle Park and the State of North Carolina.

Student Advancement at RENCI (STAR) offers hands-on experience and mentorship for aspiring leaders in data science and technology. Gain valuable insights and collaborate on cutting-edge projects alongside industry experts. Join us in shaping the future of innovation and research. Apply now for an enriching internship experience at RENCI.

Position Summary/Description:

Technological advances and increasingly complex real-world problems necessitate interdisciplinary, integrative science collaborations. This requires identifying best practices to yield success across UNC teams and beyond, and to train future scientists in collaborative practice. While team science leadership was decently understood in the pre-pandemic era, fundamental changes to team functioning necessitate new research. 

To address post-pandemic virtual or hybrid scientific teams, we propose to research and understand leadership style impact on biomedical STEM team dynamics, and leadership competencies fostering interdisciplinary and integrative, hybrid and virtual team science pursuits, particularly in highly specialized research and knowledge domains. This will ultimately determine new paradigms and key leadership concepts for universal training and implementation to improve team dynamics, productivity, and innovation. 

We will develop and conduct semi-structured interviews, aimed towards team leaders, to evaluate team dynamics, change management, turnover, psychological safety, productivity, role clarity and beyond. This interview data will help identify teaming processes and methods, leadership engagement, and implications for key team performance indicators. We will gain knowledge about team dynamics and leadership styles as preliminary data for an upcoming NSF grant submission. Additionally, this will provide us with initial research into post-pandemic team dynamics for a relevant team science research publication and presentations.

The student in this position will play an essential role on the research team, contributing to background research, survey development, and conducting interviews. Depending on skills and experience, the student may be involved in semi-structured interviews as part of the team.

Key responsibilities include:

• Actively participating in project team meetings and providing input on experiment design, execution, and analysis.
• Conducting background research collection on leadership styles and skills, both pre and post-pandemic.
• Assisting in the development of research proposals by helping incorporate findings into proposal documents.

This position offers valuable experience in hands-on research activities, collaborative project work, team science skills, and grant proposal development.

Essential Skills, Knowledge, & Abilities:

• Good written and oral communication skills
• Attention to detail
• Basic understanding of Team Science Principles 
• Familiarity with qualitative analysis tool/s 
• Ability to summarize primary research articles and translate them into written material