By Joanna Shen
Dr. Shawn Burke is a Professor and Research Scientist in the area of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at the Institute for Simulation and Training of the University of Central Florida, and runs TRACE Lab. Her research focuses on team dynamics, team learning, training and leadership practices. She has worked on several NASA projects and is currently involved in a project “Facilitating the Synergistic Side of Cultural Diversity in LDSE (Lunar and Deep Space Exploration): Identification of Challenges and Development of Cultural Training”, with CORE Lab to help analyze team dynamics and develop team training for NASA’s future deep-space exploration.
Dr. Burke’s specific interest in team performance came from her curiosity to “look at how team dynamics changes over time”. She is also interested in cultural diversity because it is essential “to understand how cultural diversity can synergize to make teamwork better, rather than work against each other”. She is also excited by the complexity of team learning because there are various interactions among different stressors involved in team dynamics.
Regarding her projects with NASA, she is excited for “the chance to have an actual impact” on NASA missions. Her NASA researches has studied team leadership, different leadership behaviors, team roles, and how different personalities affect their roles. Her current research specifically studies long-duration, deep-space missions. She points out several unique and challenging aspects of these explorations, such as the isolated environment and long transit time for communication. These constraints do not allow for rotation of crew to the ground for training or the potential timely support for space operations from Earth-based flight controllers because of the delays in communication. Her current study examines cultural diversity involved in the missions, how it influences teamwork in different phases. At the end of the research, Dr. Burke is interested in developing cultural training methods that can help prepare team for these types of missions, and maintain their function for the duration.
Dr. Burke also provides suggestions to students interested in research. She suggests practicing writing skills, since writing research paper is an important channel to share researchers’ study findings. When writing research papers, she says “it is important to convince readers about your ideas”. Dr. Burke considers flexibility another key aspect for researchers as sometimes their idea or expectations will have discrepancies with actual fieldwork.