Catalyzing Collaborative Science: Empowering Undergraduate Immunologists for Cross-disciplinary Success 4024

Description The evolving workplace increasingly demands effective collaboration across diverse, cross-disciplinary teams to tackle global challenges. This is particularly relevant in immunology, which intersects biology, engineering, and medicine. Immunologists must learn to collaborate with experts from various fields, including biomedical engineering and statistics, yet undergraduate life sciences programs offer limited opportunities for such interactions. Most team projects involve only peers within the same discipline, with few chances to collaborate with students from other institutions. To address this gap, we developed a hybrid pedagogical model that fosters collaboration between undergraduate students at the University of Toronto’s Department of Immunology and the University of British Columbia’s School of Biomedical Engineering. This model simulates real-world immunoengineering collaborations, promoting skills in teamwork, conflict resolution, and project management. In a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) study, we surveyed students’ attitudes towards cross-disciplinary collaboration and assessed their skill development over the course. Here, we detail our scaffolded approach to encourage collaboration in a cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional project and share insights from our SoTL study. Our findings aim to inform future course offerings and training initiatives, ultimately preparing immunologists for effective cross-disciplinary collaboration.