Computer Supported Team Formation Georgios Stavrou 1 , Panagiwtis Adamidis 2 , Jason Papathanasiou 1 , Kwnstantinos Tarabanis 1 , 1 University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2 Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece gstavr@uom.edu.gr, adamidis@it.teithe.gr, {jasonp, kat }@uom.gr Abstract. Composing teams may be a time consuming and complex task, depending on the multiple criteria that have to be considered. In any type of teams, the adequate selection of individuals to a team may increase the intellectual growth of the team in order to cooperate and reach the established goals. However, the success of the composed team is not always guaranteed. To fill this gap, researchers develop different tools aiming to help team makers to assign team members to teams, in order to satisfy their expectations. The main goal of this paper is to present a literature review on team formation methodologies, tools, and applications that have been suggested and used. The organization of the present paper is as follows; initially, there is an analysis of what a team is, followed by the social structure of teams and their classification. Next, a literature review and the efforts of computer supported team formation are presented. Finally, the efforts of the researchers to achieve the optimal result are discussed. Keywords: Team composition, Research team composition, Computer supported group formation, Semantic group formation, Research team 1 Introduction Team formation is crucial because team success depends largely on the appropriate assignment of team members to teams [1] [2] [3] [4]. Thus, it is important for an effective technique to be applied, so that optimal team composition can be ensured. The fact is that all teams are neither identical nor working by following the same procedures like size, purpose, and common characteristics. Distinctions between species, size, types, styles of the teams, etc. are found. Moreover, some variables such as communication skills, experience in teamwork, personality traits [5], are criteria that affect team effectiveness as well. Researchers from different disciplines, using multiple data, attempt to develop tools, techniques and methodologies in order to facilitate the process of a successful team composition. Different goals, various teaming criteria and technologies make the task hard and complicated. Computer supported team formation offers an increasingly range of tools and practices that increases the probability of generating an ideal team.