The management challenges that interview participants described related to operating in TD teams and across academic institutions reflect prior findings that suggest that both large team size and cross-institutional collaboration may handicap team-based research [7,42,43]. However, the fact that interview participants identified certain structural elements of TREC I including cross-center working groups, developmental pilot projects, all-grantee meetings, and funded leadership opportunities for trainees – as effective facilitators of large-team and cross-institutional collaboration suggests that funding initiatives can attenuate these challenges when they incorporate particular structural features. These elements of TREC I can inform the design of future funding initiatives for TD team science. However, the remaining challenges to cross-center TD team science in TREC I described by interview participants suggest that additional targeted approaches are needed to facilitate cross-institutional TD team science. These might support the development of infrastructure for cross-institutional data sharing and data harmonization and address other institutional factors that pose challenges to cross-institutional TD team science.
