The body of scientific knowledge accumulated by the scholarly disciplines such as Developmental Psychopathology can achieve meaningful public impact if wielded and used in policy decision-making. Scientific study of how policymakers use research evidence underscores the need for researchers’ policy engagement; however, barriers in the academy create conditions in which there is a need for infrastructure that increases the feasibility of researchers’ partnership with policymakers. This need led to the development of the Research-to-Policy Collaboration model, a systematic approach for developing “boundary spanning” infrastructure, which has been experimentally tested and shown to improve policymakers’ use of research evidence and bolster researchers’ policy skills and engagement. This paper presents original research regarding the optimization of the RPC model, which sought to better serve and engage scholars across the globe. Trial findings shed light on ways to improve conditions that make good use of researchers’ time for policy engagement via a virtual platform and enhanced e-communications. Future directions, implications, and practical guidelines for how scientists can engage in the political process and improve the impact of a collective discipline are also discussed.

The NIH Center for Accelerated Innovations at Cleveland Clinic (NCAI-CC) was funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to support academic investigators in technology development and commercialization. NCAI-CC was one of three multi-institutional Centers established in the fall of 2013. The goal of each Center was to catalyze the growth of an ecosystem of commercialization within their affiliated institutions and regions by managing a program of funding and guiding translational project development and by delivering commercialization education programs to participating investigators. NCAI-CC created and managed such a funding program, ultimately supporting 75 different projects across seven separate academic institutions and developed tailored educational content following the National Science Foundation I-Corps™ curriculum and delivered the program to 79 teams from 12 institutions. We determined early on that in establishment and implementation of projects, it is important to support the teams and principal investigators throughout the program. The support includes a change in principal investigator mindset from specific aims orientation to goals and deliverables on projects. Our skills development efforts emphasized commercialization and a deep understanding of customer needs for new technology adoption. Here, we review our experiences, outcomes, and insights, including the challenges identified in program implementation.

This paper describes the value of collaboration from two perspectives. The first perspective highlights the benefit of teaching communication partners collaborative communication strategies to facilitate the interactions of people with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Collaborative strategies encompass the provision of collaborative intent, emotional and cognitive support, positive questioning styles and collaborative turn taking. Translating research outcomes into accessible resources is described with reference to the TBI Express website which has video demonstrations of conversation strategies for communication partners of people with TBI. The broader meaning of collaboration is also discussed, with particular focus on the advantages collaboration can provide in advancing rehabilitation outcomes for people with acquired brain injury, their families and social networks. Collaboration is described in terms of encompassing all relevant contributors to the development of research advances, including people with acquired brain injury, their families and social networks, stakeholders, clinicians, peak bodies, students and researchers. Two examples of large-scale research collaborations occurring within Australia are described, including the NHMRC Clinical Centre of Research Excellence in Aphasia Rehabilitation and the NHMRC Moving Ahead Centre for Research Excellence in Brain Recovery, also known as Moving Ahead.