Past Events
Issues events connect our contributors with a dynamic community of interested readers, experts, and policymakers. These events emphasize the unique role Issues plays in raising the level of debate among all those who appreciate the critical contributions of science and technology. We also occasionally highlight events from our partnering institutions—the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and Arizona State University—and other events around the national capital that will be of interest to our audience.
How Did Science Become So Polarizing?
For most of the past half century, Americans of both parties expressed high levels of trust in science, coinciding with bipartisan support for investment in scientific research. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, however, that dynamic has shifted, with Republicans reporting declining trust even while Democrats planted lawn signs reading “In this house we believe in science.”
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What IS Going On in Science Policy?
The actions of the second Trump administration have caused disruption across the scientific enterprise. To what extent does the upheaval reflect the administration’s new ambitions for science policy? And how might this era of destabilization itself change the trajectory of the country’s leadership in science and technology?
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How Can Science Fiction Help Design Better Science and Tech Policies?
Careless algorithms, disaster refugees, computer girlfriends: Many predicaments of our time came to life in science fiction long before they became science reality. Fiction can be a tool to explore the consequences of technological change more fully; as Ed Finn writes in Issues, “Good science fiction does not dream up just the automobile, but also the traffic jam.”
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How Can Philosophy Help NASA Explore the Cosmos?
After the success of the Apollo missions in landing men on the moon more than 50 years ago, humans have not left low Earth orbit. Changing political directives, myriad technical options, and limited budgets have left NASA struggling to articulate and achieve a coherent strategy for human deep space missions.
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How Can Scientists Become Players in the Long Game of Policy Change?
“Policy entrepreneurs” often fly under the radar, developing policy ideas to solve problems over decades and surfacing with solutions at just the right moment. Researchers, engineers, consumer advocates, clinicians, civil servants, or community organizers—policy entrepreneurs are innovators who pull together ideas and supporters to accomplish what they could not on their own: a system for constantly updating health guidelines with the latest evidence, requirements to register clinical trials, an accounting system to track pollutants along supply chains.
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How Can Taxpayer-Funded Science Yield Drugs That Are Innovative and Affordable?
Many pharmaceutical breakthroughs can be traced to government-funded science. Sometimes this research ends up generating hugely profitable products for the companies that get the drugs to market, as was the case with a cure for hepatitis C and the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines.
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Can We Build a Quantum Workforce Fast Enough to Avoid a “Quantum Winter”?
As quantum technologies for sensing, communications, and computing advance, the sector is approaching a critical juncture. There are simply not enough people with adequate quantum education and training to fill industry demand: for every three current job openings, the United States has only one qualified candidate.
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Have We Been Looking for Interdisciplinarity in All the Wrong Places?
Building interdisciplinary research capacity has been a holy grail for at least two decades, but in concept and practice that’s usually meant assembling teams of narrowly focused individuals. In part because university science and technology programs wall off nonmajors with prerequisites and other cultural hurdles, people who thrive in the “alien space” between and across multiple disciplines are rare.
Zoom Webinar
, Washington, DC
, Washington, DC
What Happens to Global Science If the United States and China Quit Collaborating?
Over the last 40 years, international scientific collaboration between the United States and China in particular has increased global research productivity. But more recently, as the US policy community has become focused on competitiveness and security, these collaborations have begun to decrease, and many Chinese scientists and students are now leaving the country.
Zoom Webinar
, Washington, DC
, Washington, DC
Federal Research Funding: Is There a Fairer Way to Share the Pie?
Fewer than 7% of research-active institutions receive more than half of all federal funds for university research and development. Recently, multiple efforts have attempted to spread federal research funding more evenly, with the idea that broader distribution could strengthen national innovation by diversifying who does research and by spawning more regional technology-based economic development.
Zoom Webinar
, Washington, DC
, Washington, DC
How Can Academic Culture Change to Combat Sexual Harassment?
Academia is second only to the military in its prevalence of sexual harassment against women, surveys report, and STEM fields are no exception. Sexual harassment harms individuals, science, and society. Although awareness of the issue has grown in recent years, legal mechanisms like Title IX do little to prevent it from happening, and bureaucratic mandates often alienate survivors.
Zoom Webinar
, Washington, DC
, Washington, DC
How Does Research-Policy Collaboration Help Scientists and Science?
Despite frequent calls for more evidence-based policy, developing meaningful relationships and ongoing collaborations between scientific researchers and policymakers is difficult. Some of the hurdles include constraints on researchers’ time and a lack of institutional incentives to engage.
Zoom Webinar
, Washington, DC
, Washington, DC
Science Fiction/Real Policy Book Club: LOCK IN by John Scalzi
Science fiction can have real policy impacts, and comes rife with real-life commentary. For the next gathering of our Science Fiction/Real Policy Book Club, we have selected Lock In by John Scalzi.
The detective novel imagines a world in which a pandemic left 5 million people in the United States alone with lock in syndrome: fully conscious but unable to move.
Online Event
, Washington, DC
, Washington, DC
How Can the CHIPS and Science Act Deliver on Its Promises?
The CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law in August, is one of the most significant pieces of science legislation in years. With $180 billion for research and development over the next five years, it aims to bolster the semiconductor industry as well as federal science agencies like the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy.
Zoom Webinar
, Washington, DC
, Washington, DC
Is There Really a STEM Workforce Shortage?
Claims that there is a significant shortage of scientific and technical talent have been a running feature of STEM workforce policy discussions since the 1950s. The outcomes of these discussions influence not only federal investment in education and training, but also labor and immigration policy, as well as efforts to diversify the STEM workforce.
Zoom Webinar
, Washington, DC
, Washington, DC
Endless Frontier Symposium 2022
On September 22, 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (National Academies), in collaboration with the Kavli Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and Issues in Science and Technology, will host the “Endless Frontier Symposium 2022: Research and Higher Education Institutions for the Next 75 Years.”
National Academy of Sciences Building
2101 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20418
2101 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20418
Science Fiction/Real Policy Book Club
Science fiction can have real policy impacts, and comes rife with real-life commentary. For the next gathering of our Science Fiction/Real Policy Book Club, we have selected All Systems Red by Martha Wells.
Zoom
, Washington, DC
, Washington, DC
What Is Biosecurity for the Twenty-First Century?
After September 11 and the anthrax attacks in 2001, the United States adopted a top-down governance structure for bioterrorism that famously employed “guns, gates, and guards” to prevent attacks, while keeping track of suspicious “insiders” who might cause harm.
Zoom Webinar
, Washington, DC
, Washington, DC
Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century
Vannevar Bush’s influence on the history and institutions of US science and technology is unrivaled, but he remains relatively unknown outside science policy circles. G. Pascal Zachary, Bush’s biographer and editor of a new collection of Bush’s writings, The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush (Columbia University Press, 2022) talks with historian of science and technology Emily Gibson about this remarkable figure, and why Bush’s pioneering insights and lucid writings deserve a wide audience today.
Zoom Webinar
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Online Registration Required, ,
Can Bureaucracy Start a Climate Revolution?
The struggle to limit carbon emissions often pits sustainable energy against fossil fuels. But does it have to be this way? As Kartikeya Singh writes in a new essay for Issues in Science and Technology, India’s carbon-heavy government ministries have shown a surprising ability to engineer deep change: the nation brought electricity to over half a billion citizens between 2009 and 2019, then presided over a grid where wind and solar became cheaper than power from coal.
Zoom Webinar
, Washington, DC
, Washington, DC
Science Fiction/Real Policy Book Club: Infomocracy by Malka Older
Science fiction can have real policy impacts, and comes rife with real-life commentary. For the third gathering of our Science Fiction/Real Policy Book Club, we have selected Malka Older’s Infomocracy. The novel imagines a future where politics has become both simplified and infinitely more complex, thanks to the omniscient Information, which has led the transition from warring nation-states to a seemingly tidy form of corporate-ish global micro-democracy.
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Does Engineering Education Need a Revolution?
The basic structure of engineering education was set in 1955 and hasn’t changed much since. Rather than hands-on problem solving, classes emphasize theory, while a “pipeline mindset” perpetuates a system designed to keep people out rather than welcome them in.
Zoom Webinar
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
Can Dinosaur Fossils Make Science More Accessible?
Pretty much every dinosaur skeleton you see has been painstakingly excavated from rock by people with precision, skill, and creativity. What they don’t have are paleontology degrees, and what they don’t get is money or credit.
Livestream
Online Registration, Washington, DC
Online Registration, Washington, DC
Is It Time to Throw Away Our Résumés?
Society is failing Americans without college degrees. Research shows that up to 30 million workers without four-year degrees are drastically underpaid, and have the skills to earn 70% more than what they’re currently making.
Livestream
Online registration , Washington, DC
Online registration , Washington, DC
Science Fiction/Real Policy Book Club
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
Science fiction can have real science policy impacts, and comes rife with real-life commentary. Having successfully debuted our Science Fiction/Real Policy Book Club with a spirited discussion of Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous, we are excited to announce our second book selection: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, selected as one of Barack Obama’s favorite books in 2020.
Zoom Webinar
Online registration , Washington, DC
Online registration , Washington, DC
How Do You Make a Policy Idea Go Viral?
Directly informing policymaking is the goal of many researchers and academics in policy relevant fields. But no matter how original or brilliant a policy idea is, it can struggle for traction in a sea of articles and opinion pieces.
Zoom Webinar
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
How Do We Build Infrastructure for a Future We Can’t See?
The United States is preparing to spend $1 trillion on repairing and upgrading the country’s infrastructure. There will be improvements to traditional systems including transportation networks and energy grids, but the proposed federal funding will also go toward increasing the nation’s climate resilience and expanding broadband internet access.
Zoom Webinar
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
Is Cutthroat Science Hindering Discovery?
Laboratories around the world are under fire for their lack of diversity, a culture of harassment and bullying, rigid hierarchies, and research that cannot be reproduced. Is the entire research system to blame?
Livestream
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
Imagining a New Future for Nuclear Power
If nuclear power is to be an important source of carbon-free energy in the United States, the industry must confront its history and acknowledge why public support for this source of energy has fallen over the last half century.
Zoom Webinar
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
Can Alternative Meats Bring the Heartland More than Burgers?
The rise of alternative meats—either plant-based or lab-grown—could bring huge benefits for the environment, public health, animal welfare, and potentially even rural workers and the national economy. Currently, progress in this field is slow—alternative meats make up less than 1% of the total meat market share.
Zoom Webinar
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
Online Registration Required, Washington, DC
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