Building Team Science Across the Division of Radiation Oncology

Delivered in-person 2026-10-27T1100 by C.D. Fullerrécis — Building Team Science Across the Division of Radiation Oncology (MDACC RO Team Science Strategy, v2, 57 slides)This presentation argues that the Division of Radiation Oncology must deliberately re-architect itself from a collection of individually funded investigators into a self-renewing team-science platform, and it supplies the data, the models, and a 24-month plan to do so.It opens from a premise of funding duress: tightening paylines and rising output expectations make the “lone wolf” investigator model untenable. The first section establishes proof of concept from head and neck oncology, where three center-scale programs already operate as integrated teams — the H-CARR U54 on cisplatin resistance, the OPC-SURVIVOR P01 on late treatment sequelae, and the INHANCE P01 on imaging-guided treatment — each pairing surgeons, radiation oncologists, physicists, biostatisticians, and speech pathologists under shared cores. These are presented not as endpoints but as the template.A conceptual middle section draws on the NCI Team Science Field Guide and Lewicki and Bunker’s stages of trust development to frame collaboration as a skill that must be built intentionally, then introduces the deck’s organizing paradigm: a four-stage maturity model running from PI to Projects to Programs to Platforms. Lone-PI R01s become multi-PI dyads anchored by a co-authored paper; successful dyads cluster under a disease theme to compete for P01s and SPOREs; programs then stand up cross-cutting cores — imaging, biobank, data science, outcomes — that persist across funding cycles. The payoff is a platform that sustains senior investigators while embedding K-awardees and early-stage faculty into funded projects, converting episodic grant wins into durable institutional capacity. A brief look back at the Division’s circa-2015 strategic initiatives sets up the question of what the next decade’s initiatives should be.The analytic core applies this lens to the whole Division using a faculty bibliometric dataset: 224 faculty across physicians, medical physicists, and experimental scientists; roughly 19,000 Scopus publications; 221 active NIH projects; and 35 multi-PI award holders. The findings are pointed. Experimental Radiation Oncology is the genuine hub of the co-funding network, but physicist–physician co-funding is nearly absent. Funding tracks seniority roughly three to one: only two of 33 assistant-professor physicists and three of 27 early-career physicians hold NIH awards, and no junior faculty member is an MPI. The largest clinical sections — Breast, GU, Gynecology — have the lowest funded share, and the flagship P01, both U54s, and the Division’s sole T32 all expire in 2027. A scorecard grades the Division A on talent, B+ on center-grant capacity, and C on junior pipeline and data infrastructure.The strategy responds with new networks rather than renewals. Four cross-section P01 concepts occupy documented whitespace — HEARTBEAM (cardio-oncology and cardiac radioablation), NEUROSPARE (brain metastases and neurocognition), VELOCITY (FLASH and spatially fractionated radiotherapy), and RADIANT (theranostics integrated with external beam) — alongside first-ever RadOnc-led Breast and Prostate program grants and a Division-wide late-effects program. Every project carries a “dyad rule”: a senior MPI co-leads with an assistant professor from a different pillar or section, supported by protected effort. A training stack of a Radiation Sciences T32, a team-science R25, and a K12 feeds the pipeline, and four binding constraints — junior effort, promotion credit for team roles, a common data platform, and a standing team-science office — are named as prerequisites.A phased roadmap sequences dyad pilots, multi-PI R01s, training grants, the new P01s, and the SPOREs across 24 months, culminating in a proposed Radiation Oncology Strategic Initiatives (ROSI) program and an invitation to discussion.