Dr. Alina Lungeanu is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies in the College of Arts, Media and Design, with a joint appointment in the D’Amore McKim School of Business in the Management and Organizational Development Group, and Director of the Network, Explorations, and Teams Lab (NET Lab) at the Network Science Institute. By combining insights from social science and network science she investigates how individual and team characteristics interact with network structures to influence team formation and performance. Her research focuses on high-stakes environments such as scientific collaborations, innovation teams, and extreme teams, with emphasis on leadership and cross-boundary collaboration. Following her recent Sage Publishers Award for Best Management History Division Paper in Leadership and the publication of a new study on crew dynamics in preparation for a mission to Mars, we asked her a few questions about the lessons on leadership from Ancient Rome, what are the ingredients for a successful space exploration team, and other real-world applications of her research.
Q. 1
You direct the Network, Exploration, and Teams Lab (NET Lab) where you investigate how network structures and team characteristics shape collaboration and performance, especially in high-stakes environments. What have you learned about the specific configurations that make scientific and innovation teams most successful?
At the NET Lab, we’ve learned that teams do best when they combine different ways of thinking with tight-knit ties, especially when the stakes are high. Mixing areas of expertise reliably sparks fresh ideas, but those sparks turn into results when people have worked together enough to coordinate quickly and feel safe speaking up. In our studies, a broader mix of skills raises the novelty and impact of the work, but the benefits level off once a team grows past about eight people. As it seems, bigger isn’t always better for creativity.
We also find that team make-up matters in different ways. Teams with great internal differences tend to face coordination challenges at the beginning.Teams that break away from their field's traditional norms—such as those headed by researchers from underrepresented groups or those that combine uncommon disciplines—tend to form longer-lasting collaborations. In the end, success is determined by the network in which the team is embedded: when people work together on multiple teams, ideas spread more quickly, and projects stay on track. In short, the best science and innovation teams balance new viewpoints with familiar relationships, nested in networks that offer both novel ties and a feeling of stability.
Q. 2
One of your research areas centers on space exploration teams, and specifically on the performance of “extreme teams.” With the recent case of two astronauts stranded at the International Space Station coming immediately to mind, can you talk more about the factors and dynamics your studies take into account, and the prospective real-world applications?
Space missions are, at their heart, team sports played away from home. Crews operate isolated, under temporal pressure, and with only partial support from Earth. So, when mid-course changes happen (as we've recently witnessed with longer-than-expected stays on board the ISS), it's the dynamics of the team that hold everything together. Our research on astronaut crews and high-fidelity analogs (such as NASA's HERA and the SIRIUS missions) examines three large ingredients: how individuals remain connected, how they distribute leadership, and whether they share a common picture of goals, roles, and tasks.
Workflow is in fact essential: switching between tasks, tools, and discussions with Mission Control creates friction, but smart sequencing and smooth handoffs save time and reduce risk. Equally important is the structure of relationships within the crew. Teams with a stable core and flexible roles manage stress better than those in which leadership is too centralized or bonds break under pressure. Finally, being "on the same page" facilitates creativity and problem-solving, but timing is critical: performance tends to decrease in the third quarter of a mission as fatigue sets in, requiring active effort to stay aligned.
These lessons hold real-world practical applications: more pre-mission training for handoffs and decision-making, schedules created to anticipate mid-mission slumps, and monitoring systems to detect relational tensions early. These are especially important for long, more independent trips to the Moon and Mars. The winning approach to "extreme teams" is this: equal parts trust, clear roles, and adaptive routines which allows astronauts to stay in sync and resilient, even when worlds apart.
Q. 3
You co-authored a paper on shared leadership arrangements in Ancient Rome (32–491 CE) that just won the Sage Publishers Award for the Best Management History Division Paper in Leadership. What can the rule structures of Roman emperors teach us about leadership models today, and in which contexts do these findings best apply?
History gives a surprisingly modern lesson: in Ancient Rome, two leaders at the top were the wobbliest setup. Across nearly five centuries, co-emperors often went back to one ruler or expanded to three or more. Dual leadership rarely held steady. By contrast, triads and larger groups lasted longer because they had a tie-breaker and enough room to share influence or to form coalitions. Such leadership systems were dynamic and rarely stalling.
What does that imply for today’s leadership? Co-CEOs or co-founders may function, but such leadership systems are inherently precarious unless the rules of the game are crystal clear. If you can include a third, you have stability: a third co-leader can mediate, free-up decisions, and simplify succession. If you keep it at two, you require additional guardrails. So Rome teaches us that "two at the top" is usually unstable, whereas one or three or more can provide companies with balance and longevity. These findings best apply to high-stakes, high-uncertainty environments, like startups and big R&D investments, to cross-unit or cross-country initiatives – think of joint ventures, mergers, international programs—and to mission-driven organizations with multiple stakeholders, such as universities, hospitals, and nonprofits.
Q. 4
The NET Lab is part of the Network Science Institute, which brings together researchers from across disciplines. How has being part of this broader community enhanced your lab’s ability to study team networks and high-stakes collaborations, and what unique opportunities or resources has it opened up for your work?
Being part of the Network Science Institute supercharges what the NET Lab can do. My own path spans computer science (as undergrad) and a PhD in Technology & Social Behavior, so I naturally build projects that mix computation with social science. NetSI makes that seamless: we co-design studies with colleagues across communication, political science, law, management, and core network science—and we publish in those communities, too. That mix lets us ask sharper questions about how teams work under pressure and test them in real settings, from research labs to public-safety organizations to spaceflight analogs.
Through NetSI, we’ve found collaborators with complementary expertise, outstanding students to co-advise and expand our research capacity, and access to shared datasets, code, and visualization support that help us measure team interactions. In short, NetSI turns our lab into part of a much bigger team and a perfect place to study (and improve) how teams perform when it matters most.
