Before delving into what an ecosystem analysis can provide, it is useful to unpack the vocabulary of the STEM-ME framework (see Table 1). In our research, we found that the terminology helped individuals across the same institution, and across institutions, talk about the strengths and potential vulnerabilities within their ecosystems using shared language (Montgomery et al., 2024). The first step is to take stock of mentoring assets, referring to any formal or informal program, initiative, or structure. As mentioned before, the biomedical research community contains many key mentoring assets across all levels that contribute to workforce preparation and development pathways. These include special mentoring or scholar programs, offices (e.g., student success, undergraduate research, graduate or postdoctoral affairs, faculty advancement, diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI]), and key individuals who are advancing mentoring on their campus or in their organization, whether formally or in the context of informal initiatives designed to advance students, postdoctoral scholars, or faculty.

Assets also exist outside individual organizations; we zoom out to consider disciplinary societies and professional development organizations from which an individual PI, team, department, or institution can seek expertise or support. The biomedical research community has many such assets (e.g., professional societies, conferences, consortia, and educational and professional development opportunities). Professional societies, such as the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), offer membership, meetings, and educational opportunities for individuals doing work in biomedical engineering research and development. Similarly, organizations such as The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and conferences such as the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS) provide opportunities to share research and develop synergistic collaborations that support advocacy and inform policymaking (Casad et al., 2016; Hulede, 2018; Lee et al., 2020). In addition, several organizations serve as mentoring resource assets to the biomedical community. For example, the Center for Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) (Branchaw et al., 2020; Hurtado et al., 2017; Pfund et al., 2015) provides mentoring training and curricula via its National Research Mentoring Network to support researchers and practitioners “to enhance…biomedical-related research.” Training can include leveraging resources to help PIs increase their awareness of cultural diversity (Byars-Winston et al., 2023). In addition, the Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) Translational Research Network has provided important biomedical research infrastructure that has contributed to advancing workforce diversity while advancing research on health inequities (Ofili et al., 2019).

Instructional design and educational and curricular activities may also serve as assets within organizations in biomedical contexts. Undergraduate and graduate biomedical engineering (BME) and bioengineering (BioE) programs have existed for more than 50 years with foci in physiology and medicine (Linsenmeier and Saterbak, 2020). These programs have provided classes, incubator courses, and curricular experiences to support the development of scientists (Huang-Saad and Springer, 2020; Huang-Saad et al., 2020); yet without exposure to actual practice, graduates may lack an understanding of the connections between curricular experiences and biomedical career opportunities (Vempala and Huang-Saad, 2022). Examining courses, instruction, and activities that contribute to biomedical contexts as assets may be useful in identifying opportunities for potential synergies.

Next, it can be useful to consider the mentoring stakeholders and champions within an organization. Stakeholders are people or groups who care about the investment in or outcomes of mentoring, and they include more than just mentees and mentors. For example, many campuses must consider the needs of alumni or the donor to a prominent center or regional workforce needs. Considering the needs of these stakeholders can help broaden the purview of an individual PI who is thinking about developing a mentoring program or that of an institutional leader considering sunsetting a program. A champion of mentoring works to advance a mentoring initiative, whether within their own lab, department, or institution, by persuading or motivating others to see its value. Identifying champions can help when looking for possible partnerships. In the biomedical realm, this may involve partnerships across academic and clinical areas, as well as external partnerships with independent or private medical institutions or private industry with biomedical interests.

The stewardship emphasis of the STEM-ME framework encourages a focus on resourcing, sustaining, and informing the ecosystem (Whittaker and Montgomery, 2022). In our research, we found stewardship to be a novel point of discussion with regard to mentoring, as many initiatives operate in isolation. Many community members have not considered what is needed within the ecosystem at large or the importance of a steward(s) to manage and steer organizational resources and shift the reward structures for mentoring (Montgomery et al., 2024). The ability of stewards to shift institutional ecosystems is critical to a number of challenges, including the recognized gap in identity-relevant career development (Gibbs and Griffin, 2013; Gibbs et al., 2014, 2015) and support in navigating biomedical funding systems with documented biases that impact entry into and success navigating the biomedical workforce (Chen et al., 2022; Taffe and Gilpin, 2021). In our research, we found that individuals holding various leadership roles did not necessarily see mentoring stewardship as part of their responsibilities and that transitions in leadership led mentoring stewardship to fall by the wayside (Packard et al., 2024).

We developed two STEM-ME tools: an inventory to take stock of current mentoring assets and a visual map to display their presence across the ecosystem (Montgomery et al., 2024). The inventory is especially useful for affirming strengths and noticing gaps, including which groups are currently being served or left out and by whom. Even the act of trying to complete the inventory can help a campus team recognize the vast array of assets and potential opportunities for closer collaboration, including learning from successes in different domains (Packard et al., 2023). For example, upon taking an inventory of mentoring assets, a biomedical community may realize that it has many programs for early career faculty and a gap in service for postdoctoral scholars (see Table 2 for an institutional community’s sample inventory worksheet). They might also consider convening a cluster of program directors to discuss any shared approaches including their preparation of mentors or recruitment strategies.

The visual map is especially useful for noticing concentrations of mentoring activity or vulnerabilities in the system, such as stressors or a lack of mentor resources within the ecosystem. For example, despite having careful stewardship and institutionalization of resources benefiting those pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies in engineering and medicine, an institution might observe a set of faculty departures in math and biological sciences, along with a major biomedical organization closing down operations in the broader community. This may create vulnerability within the broader mentoring ecosystem. They could consider exploring options to reconnect with a relevant disciplinary society in order to bolster their offerings. Figure 1 is a sample map template that could be used by an institution with this situation.

Identifying gaps and vulnerabilities can prompt a specific action plan for an ecosystem. While many leaders or PIs might imagine the need for creating new initiatives, we encourage pausing to consider whether there is a prospect for collaboration to address limitations or expand capacity. In particular, this is a time to look for pathways to synergy within the ecosystem. Next, we will examine what synergy can look like to strengthen biomedical mentoring ecosystems.

Biomedical collaborations are common in the field, and synergies can be leveraged both by supporting workforce pathways in biomedical research and by fostering innovation within and across institutional collaborators. Synergy is defined as the added value gained from collaboration (De Vries et al., 2020), in which the benefit of collaboration is greater than the sum of the individual parts (De Vries et al., 2021). Collaborating teams often create synergy when they innovate by combining services or expertise in new ways (Ye et al., 2012). Interdisciplinary teams within biomedical communities are likely to generate new options or experimental advances by working across disciplinary boundaries (Leydesdorff and Ivanova, 2021). In many studies of synergistic collaboration, the word “synergy” generates a positive valence, something to strive toward when working with others (Gaggiotti, 2012).

To create synergy, teams need to move from isolation and disconnection to intentional collaboration and strategic connections. The academy, like many other work settings, is currently set up in silos in which teams work independently without intersection or integration, and threats of “turf battles” can impede collaboration (Neill and Jiang, 2017). Even when teams would benefit from collaboration, it is not uncommon to face challenges. Nahid et al. (2012), in their study of tuberculosis diagnostics, found that different teams often worked on the same problem, often in parallel. Each team can hold highly specialized knowledge, resulting in disparate islands of expertise (Long et al., 2014). Given that resources are not limitless, intentionality is required when engaging in collaboration. Indeed, interdisciplinary collaborations can reveal hierarchies across fields, with the potential to marginalize a subset of members; collaborators need to weigh the relative balance between the trade-offs and synergies gained for each interested stakeholder (Quintelier et al., 2023).

Collaborative efforts are often impeded due to a lack of time and energy (Packard et al., 2023). In many institutions, the capacity to engage in collaboration, let alone to compare notes and learn from one another within and across institutions, is stretched thin. Further, the reward structures within most institutions, especially in higher education, are still primarily based on individual output rather than collective effort, and scarcity mindsets promote competition over cooperation (Whittaker and Montgomery, 2022). Even in collaborative published work, there is often an expectation to specify the percentage or specific granular contribution made by each party.

Innovation is needed to solve the most challenging biomedical problems. Given the existence of so many interdisciplinary collaborative partnerships that aim to innovate and tackle the vexing challenges within biomedical research and collaboration, much potential exists to innovate with the goal of advancing the diversity and culture of the biomedical workforce. We argue that adopting the STEM mentoring ecosystems framework is a productive step forward, as this can help potential partners within institutions consider identifying synergies within their institution and across institutions, rather than always thinking innovation must be new, separate, and distinct from the collective. Despite the challenges, there are pathways to synergy that individuals, teams, and institutions can undertake.

We offer three pathways to synergy—strategies that can facilitate and advance synergy. These strategies can be especially helpful to biomedical researchers engaging in interdisciplinary intra-institutional and cross-institutional collaborations.

First, the composition of the collaborating team is important, as is the willingness to coordinate communication intentionally across their biomedical research and mentoring domains. While research expertise is certainly valuable, team members also need to be open to creating a shared vision (Lawless et al., 2024) with a spirit of “research kinship” (McCorkle, 2011). Given the potential for marginalizing members of an interdisciplinary team (Quintelier et al., 2023), collaborators need to be able to recognize the legitimacy of knowledge across disciplines (Prainsack et al., 2010). To aid in this process, adding team members who act as “network mediators” can help; these are people who are adept at brokering collaboration, breaking down silos, and facilitating the cross-fertilization of ideas (Long et al., 2014). An alternative is to leverage external facilitation from an expert in collaborative participatory design so that each collaborative partner is enlisted as part of the process (Shah et al., 2015).

Let’s look at an example. The Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Directed Multiscale Assembly of Cellular Metamaterials with Nanoscale Precision, or CELL-MET for short, is the name of a collaborative, multi-institutional biomedical Engineering Research Center sponsored by the National Science Foundation; it was established to engineer clinically significant, functional heart tissue that could be used to repair or replace damaged heart tissue (National Science Foundation, 2024). CELL-MET is composed of multiple interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary teams from various backgrounds, with expertise spanning tissue engineering, nanotechnology, regenerative medicine, education, diversity, administration and outreach. Researchers, trainees, and staff from Boston University, the University of Michigan, Florida International University, Brown University, Fort Valley State University, National University of Ireland, NHS College, Queen’s University of Belfast, Wyss Institute, Harvard Medical School, Columbia University, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), and Centro Atomico-Bariloche (Argentina) work together to conduct and disseminate research, train future biomedical researchers, create mentoring best practices, and engage with industry, schools, and museums. This diverse group of scientists includes over 200 undergraduate students and student/postdoc alumni, of whom 60% self-report having an underrepresented race, ethnicity, gender, or disability status.

Collaborative activities include communications between cross-institutional members of multiple integrated engineering groups to solve issues related to their respective technical areas, as well as meeting on a quarterly basis so that teams can share research approaches, protocols, and analysis techniques across their interdisciplinary partner labs. Beyond these technical working groups, they also convene an engineering and workforce development team, a diversity and culture of inclusion and broader impacts team, and innovation ecosystem partners. These members focus on providing pre-collegiate educational and outreach programs; cross-institutional courses and co-curricular experiences; justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion mentoring training and programming; and industry education, workshops, and partnership development.

CELL-MET team members collectively participate in planning meetings for their respective teams, including annual retreats and training workshops. They also convene trainees across institutions for collective workshops on science communication, among other topics. It is notable that when the CELL-MET team meets, they adhere to particular common practices, including the use of ground rules, annotated agendas, and turn-taking, known in organizational spaces for promoting productive group dynamics, contributing to shared voice and inclusion among their diverse participants (Bowman, 2015; Holmes et al., 2016; Settles et al., 2007).

Second, using shared language, tools, or strategies can help teams as they collaborate, making it more likely to discover or create synergy. In their work on organizational mergers, Tarba et al. (2019) recommended using a shared language and a shared inventory of characteristics to facilitate the examination of similarities in functions and operations before examining their complementarity. In our STEM-ME work, we offered teams the shared language of assets, gaps, stewards, and champions, which teams found useful in their analyses of the mentoring ecosystems found at their respective campuses (Montgomery et al., 2024), as this also facilitated an understanding of shared qualities and differences in approaches. In addition, we guided teams in a dialogue exercise (Packard et al., 2024) in which teams were encouraged to analyze concentrations of mentoring activity in visual maps of their varied ecosystems, which contributed to both intra- and cross-institutional learning. Our findings align with research by Levites Strekalova et al. (2021) that demonstrated the value of using scaffolded collaboration dialogues to help biomedical research students from different disciplines share perspectives equitably and engage in productive mutual engagement.

For interdisciplinary teams in particular, taking time to establish shared language has been shown to be critical for interdisciplinary biomedical research in which the members from distinct disciplines are accustomed to and practiced in communicating through distinct disciplinary languages (Ravid et al., 2013). While there are many disciplinary capstone courses in undergraduate institutions, there may be a need for more interdisciplinary capstone courses to prepare emergent researchers for interdisciplinary collaboration, which can include talking across disciplines (Ross et al., 2022). Courses, whether for students or professional scientists, can be important places to gain access to professional mentoring skills, whether that is talking across disciplines or learning how to mentor across difference (Byars-Winston et al., 2023).

Further, as described by Shen (2019), engagement in synergistic discourse requires teams to step back and see their team’s role in the bigger picture. This stepping back to see the collective can be supported by the use of shared strategies. Within the Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) Promise Academy, multiple institutions worked together on a shared financial strategy that could be replicated at the state system level; they shared a goal of recruiting and retaining underrepresented faculty in the biomedical sciences and leveraged the conversion of postdoctoral appointments into tenure-line appointments (Cresiski et al., 2022). This initiative has been expanded into partnership with additional state-wide systems including California, Texas, and North Carolina.

Third, clear, longer-term organizational supports and sources of funding need to be in place that lay the foundation for teams to discover synergy. Collaboration requires investment and some leaps of faith that the investment will be worthwhile. In some cases, institutions have supported synergistic collaboration by creating an organizational center, which in certain circumstances, may draw together a budget, shared space, and dedicated personnel. For example, the Rockefeller Institute, which became integrated with CalTech, was initially founded to emphasize diversity in the biomedical sciences and to focus on strategically leveraging scientific diversity to generate major discoveries (Hollingsworth and Hollingsworth, 2000). The nature of biomedical collaborations can span a wide array of areas, from data integration and analysis to data standards (Lee et al., 2009). This means that personnel supporting synergies within biomedical “collaboratories” need to possess appropriate training in the scientific and technical aspects of the collaborative research being performed as well as long-term strategic planning efforts.

While grants that require teams to work on institutional transformation (e.g., the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE or INCLUDES, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Inclusive Excellence, the Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation’s [FIRST] program), and collective action across multiple institutions is promising, more can be done to promote intentional collaboration within organizations themselves. At the very least, intra-institutional work can foster the intra-organizational learning necessary for action planning. Even within successful interdisciplinary collaborations, many partners are often unaware of institutional resources that they could tap into or of others who are doing work in a similar vein. Stepping back, we see the potential impact of synergistic strategies for STEM transformation at large when applied across institutions and disciplines. We argue that there are many locations from which one can work to improve the infrastructure (Packard et al., 2023). We also see a critical role for organizational leaders and stewards of the mentoring ecosystem to consider how to create the conditions at the institutional level so synergic strategies can form and thrive.