NASA Taps Dorothy Carter to Study Teamwork Issues

Fifty years ago this month, NASA put two astronauts on the moon. NASA’s next giant leap will be sending humans to Mars, projected for the 2030s, and a University of Georgia researcher is partnering with the space agency to explore the challenges of such a mission.

Dorothy Carter, OIBR Fellow and Psychology I/O Assistant Professor, is an expert in successful communication and collaboration among multiple teams and this will be an essential part of deep space travel. Carter specializes in teamwork and examines how multiple groups work together in pursuit of larger goals.

“I’m especially interested in understanding how large systems comprised of multiple teams from different areas of expertise work together effectively,” said Carter. “Breakdowns often occur when people with different perspectives try to collaborate, but collaboration across disciplines is essential in order to address many of the most important problems facing humanity.”

Carter is principal investigator on Project FUSION (Facilitating Unified Systems of Interdependent Organizational Networks), funded by a $1 million grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Project FUSION aims to better understand how the spaceflight “multi-team systems” involved in a long-duration space exploration mission will need to function in order to send a team of humans to Mars successfully.

Read more about Dr. Carter’s research.