How to Do Team Science

“Going into graduate school in the 1990s, I thought science was more of a solo adventure,” says Charlie Nunn, now Gosnell Family Professor in Global Health, Evolutionary Anthropology. “But when I had my first collaboration, I was like, oh, wow, this is what it’s all about — working together and learning from one another and finding the right team.”

That realization has shaped Nunn’s leadership of the Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine (TriCEM), where he serves as director. Based at Duke, TriCEM is an incubator for innovative research to improve human and animal health, organizing events that spark new collaborations and providing pilot funding for early-stage research.

TriCEM exemplifies Duke’s commitment to interdisciplinary research and education, bringing together scholars, physicians, veterinarians and public health professionals. In 2024, “Times Higher Education” ranked Duke No. 5 globally in its inaugural Interdisciplinary Science Rankings, recognizing the university’s leadership in cross-disciplinary innovation.

I sat down with Nunn to learn about TriCEM and its success over the past year — from a reimagined summer institute to a strengthened leadership team and bold plans for the future. Below are highlights from our conversation.

Why Evolutionary Medicine?

Evolutionary medicine is about why we get sick. Why are we vulnerable to different diseases? Why do we have infectious diseases? Why are there always new infectious diseases that are attacking our populations? Why is childbirth difficult for humans? Is that true in other animals? And what is it about our evolutionary history that makes us vulnerable? Why do we get cancer? Why do we have mental health disorders? Why do we age? You can’t understand those questions without an evolutionary perspective.

So that’s part of it — understanding our health — but then the other part is how can we use this to actually improve health. If we understand that cancer or infectious disease is an evolutionary process, how can we use that understanding to devise cancer treatments or approaches that avoid the evolution of resistance to antibiotics? 

Interdisciplinary Matchmaking

I’ve been the director of TriCEM for 10 years. We’re basically trying to connect people who have these interests or expertise in different areas and want to connect around the area of health.

It might be an oncologist who wants to connect with somebody who’s an evolutionary geneticist. Or somebody in neurology who wants to work with somebody who knows phylogenetics. So we’re kind of a matchmaking service, and we’re also training the next generation of scientists who want to pursue interdisciplinary research.

New Model for a Summer Institute

One of the things I’m most proud of is the Evolutionary Medicine Summer Institute (EMSI). We’ve run this workshop eight times. But we did something totally different this year, and it paid off.

Instead of having it be just the local people — our TriCEM collaborators at Duke, UNC and NC State — we reached out to 10 other evolutionary medicine centers and similar programs. We said, we want to run this workshop with all of you involved and we want to do it around a topic.

We worked together to identify a theme, “Overcoming Resistance: Harnessing Evolution to Control Cancer, Infectious Disease, and Pests.”  

I tried to get a lot of buy-in. The only thing I asked of them was to send one trainee and one instructor. We launched the application portal, and many, many people applied. It was the best application pool we’ve ever had.

The workshop itself was amazing, highly interdisciplinary, super engaged instructors and participants. Our instructors stayed after their presentations and came out to the events at night, came back the next day, way more than usual. It was really exciting.

Working together with other people has always been what I love about being a scientist. We made new connections and we have outcomes from that. There is a synthesis paper participants and instructors are writing and then smaller teams are working on individual projects.

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Training Through Collaboration

One of the goals of the EMSIs is to not just train students in methods but train them how to be scientists and how to work together, how to do team science, how to collaborate.

In all the EMSIs, we have the participants work with others on small projects. We typically have them do clinical briefs — a very short-format paper on a specific topic in evolution. We’ve had at least seven of them published.

This year, it’s been better than ever because of the synthesis paper that all of us are working on together, with different parts assigned to different teams of instructors and participants. We’re going to submit it to a high-profile journal. We think it’s an original and important contribution, facilitated by the interdisciplinary nature of EMSI. 

Strong Leadership

I’ve kind of been running TriCEM by myself. We have associate directors at each of the other universities, but I realized I need somebody I can go to at Duke who brings something different — both in terms of disciplinary expertise and style. It’s important for the longevity of the center to make sure there’s a pipeline of leaders. 
    
So, I brought on Jason Somarelli as associate director six months ago. Jason was just an obvious person. He works on cancer; I work on infectious disease — the two big areas for TriCEM. Jason brings new perspectives and a rich experience and understanding of interdisciplinary team-building. He’s very tactical and a good listener. He’s just been an incredible partner. I feel like I’ve never had as good a team as I have now.

Jennifer Hurtgen is TriCEM’s assistant director and a gifted organizer and communicator. She's part of Duke’s Research Project Management Core. Jennifer fills a gap in logistics and communications to actually get things done and follow up. She's like a boundary spanner — she knows what direction to go in next. And she weighs in on so many things — the academic program, our mission.

We also have a graduate student, Katrina DeWitt, involved in TriCEM’s initiatives and leadership. Katrina just finished her Ph.D. in biology and was previously funded by TriCEM. Katrina has impressive communication skills and sees how to move things forward. I trusted her right away and she was able to pick up and take things and run with them.

Student Support

One of our signature TriCEM programs is funding for graduate students. We offer grants of about $7,500 for their Ph.D. research. It gives students experience as a PI, where they have control over their funds. It is just a crucial part of the training experience.

We also have some add-on funding that includes funding for an undergraduate. We encourage our funded Ph.D. student to use Muser [to find the undergraduate], which broadens participation and opportunities for research.

We encourage the graduate students to think about how they’re going to recruit an undergraduate, and then to work closely with them in a meaningful way — not just someone who’s doing their work for them, but someone they’re mentoring and teaching. We’ve trained 21 undergraduates.

Another thing we do is give graduate students the option to engage with the public at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. They get the opportunity to work with the museum staff to develop interactive displays or presentations — and they get a $500 stipend. We also offer the Steve Meshnick Travel Award, where we offer up to $2,000 to support travel to conferences. 

What’s Next: Climate, Health and Evolution

We’re already thinking about May 2026. The next EMSI theme is going to be around climate, health and evolutionary medicine, which aligns with Duke priorities.

The field hasn’t engaged fully enough with climate change. I want to articulate how ecology and evolution are relevant to the area of climate change and health. The idea I have right now is to get external funding and home in on international field work.

Future Funding

Of course, a big part of what we do is support early research that results in external grants. Our seed grants have been recognized as playing a role in securing millions of dollars in external NIH, NSF, and other grants. TriCEM leaders — often with other centers and institutes — also directly apply for grants that align with one or more of TriCEM’s missions.

For example, TriCEM led a successful grant application to the NSF’s Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention that connected faculty and centers across Duke, UNC and NC State. More recently, some of us have been involved in developing a successful NIH Center of Excellence for Systems Modeling of Infection and Immunity Across Biological Scales.

I am so proud of everything TriCEM has accomplished, especially this year under our new leadership structure. Our collective success is undoubtedly a result of our focus on teamwork, our interdisciplinary nature and our shared mission.

Main image: Charlie Nunn (far left) with instructors and participants at the 2025 Evolutionary Medicine Summer Institute (EMSI)