There is increasing evidence that the search for solutions to technological, social and economic problems requires collaborative ties between different type of actors: scientists, technology and business practitioners, civil society (among others). Analysis of these types of networks and collaboration processes represents a line of strategic research in current science and innovation studies (EC, 2012; Owen et al., 2012). Hence, we draw on the argument that greater network cohesion is crucial to elicit effective learning processes in research networks consisting of highly diverse actors. We argue that there is a poor understanding about the specific type of mechanisms that promote effective exploitation of the complementarities of network diversity, to jointly achieve considerable scientific and societal impact. This is particularly the case concerning research networks consisting of highly heterogeneous actors, when complementarities among partners as well as the coordination challenges involved might be greater. This discussion motivates our research. The specific setting for our proposal is the biomedical research context. The biomedical context allows us to address the multiple dimensions of actor heterogeneity, and the analysis of processes that contribute to bridging translational gaps between knowledge generation and application. The focus of this study is a research group participating in one of the most prominent support platforms for translational biomedical research in Spain: Centros de Investigación Biomédica en Red (CIBER). This is one of the main publicly funded initiatives to support research excellence and translational research in Spain (CIBER, 2006). This initiative embraces a wide range of research projects covering many different types of diseases and pathologies which are critical from the viewpoint of their impact on healthcare. The proposal aims to investigate how the scientific research network of this group operates to deliver both scientific discoveries and applicable results. We propose the use of a multi-criteria approach (Saaty, 2010) to model the interaction processes of this group with relevant and diverse actors. These interaction processes will be grouped in components corresponding to distinct research phases from basic to clinical research stages. The approach will be used to analyze the influences that exist between these processes of interaction within and among applicable research results.