Highlights

• Team science is gaining acceptance as a bona fide framework for effective collaborative research.
• One of the original goals of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute–UnitedHealth Global Health Centers of Excellence (COE) Program was to fund individual COE research.
• The value-added outcome of the COE network was to foster global collaboration to combat noncommunicable cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases through the conduct of team science across multiple disciplines and diverse geographical locations.
• This article analyzes the impact of federal funding through a social network analysis and the unexpected relationships among the COE Program members that resulted from team science and established the social and professional networks that nurtured professional collaboration among these team members.