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Origin

What is MaTRIC’s origin story?

In 2022, Barb Martin, DrPH, MPH, assistant director for Population Sciences and Community Outreach and Engagement at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, kept hearing the same issues, no matter whom she talked to.

Early-stage investigators need help.

The UNC research environment is confusing and unclear.

There is no “Navigation Guide” for new Lineberger members or research staff.

We need an “Easy” button.

She held nearly two dozen listening sessions with senior and early-stage researchers, new and seasoned project managers, and administrators in finance, grants development, and human resources.

They all seemed to agree:

  • Most early career grants are not large enough to support full-time staff. Hiring students isn’t the answer.
  • Faculty often don’t have the management know-how; they were trained in research, not how to manage projects, finances, or people.
  • Research by its nature is siloed, and PMs can feel isolated. They want ways to troubleshoot operational issues and share best practices.
  • A seasoned PM can make life easier for the entire ecosystem: the finance office, HR, central administration, and anyone else who interacts with studies.
  • Any successful researcher will tell you: An effective project manager is worth their weight in gold.

To address these issues, two solutions emerged for UNC Lineberger:

  1. Offer centralized project management, particularly for early-stage, population science-focused researchers.
  2. Build a system to share resources on effective research management practices.

Of course, every meaningful initiative needs a catchy name.

And thus, MaTRIC (Managing Teams, Research, and Integrated Coordination) was born.

Its mission is ambitious: To enhance Population Science research productivity.

In early 2023, Barb pitched MaTRIC to UNC Lineberger leadership. They agreed to conduct a pilot: hire one MaTRIC project manager, secure a few researcher-clients, and see if a pain point could be solved.

We hired our first PM in August 2023 and launched the first MaTRIC cohort of three researcher-clients that Fall. Within nine months, MaTRIC had requests to support 12 studies – and brought on four more project managers to meet their needs. Solution #1 (Offering centralized project management) was off and running.

In spring 2024, the growing MaTRIC team turned its attention to Solution #2: Building a system to share resources on effective research management practices.

For this to succeed, they knew they needed significant buy-in and engagement from a broad range of partners across Lineberger. We asked 12 brilliant partners to advise on how we could collectively help provide best practices and guidelines around effective research management practices.

Despite everyone’s incredibly busy workloads and full-time jobs, each person we approached agreed to help. Together, they serve as the MaTRIC steering committee.