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Public Engagement with Science Summit: Strategies for Federal Implementation

Public Engagement with Science Summit:

Strategies for Federal Implementation


Date and Time:

April 17, 2024

8:30 am - 3:30 pm ET

Location:

General Services Administration Headquarters

1800 F St. NW, Washington, DC, 20405

Please enter building at the 1800 F Street NW lobby.

Connected Conference Rooms: 1459, 1460, 1461

Event Background and Purpose:

This Summit is inspired by the letter sent in August 2023 by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) to President Biden on Advancing Public Engagement with the Sciences. In the letter, PCAST issued a call to action to advance public engagement with science.

Public engagement and inclusive dialogue are essential to science and technology that benefits the health, environment, national security, and well-being of all Americans. Federal agencies play a critical role in creating avenues for robust science and technology communication and public engagement.

This event is produced with the support of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.


Event Resources:

Event Slides and Speaker Bios

Summit Attendees

Agenda:

Morning

8:00 am - 8:30 am Attendee Check-In

8:30 am - 8:40 am Welcome and Opening Remarks

8:40 am - 9:40 am Fireside Chat: The value and importance of public engagement with science.

9:40 am - 9:45 am Transition

9:45 am - 10:55 am Panel Discussion: Perspectives and high-level agency overviews of programs and portfolios that support public engagement with science.

10:55 am - 11:00 am Transition

11:00 am - 12:15 pm Facilitated Feedback Session: Opportunities and challenges for federal implementation.

12:15 pm - 1:45 pm Lunch Break and Networking

Afternoon

1:45 pm - 3:25 pm Project Panel Discussion: Lessons and insights on a continuum of public engagement featuring exemplary projects.

3:25 - 3:30 pm Closing Remarks


The Implementation of Federal Prize and Citizen Science Authority for Fiscal Years 21-22:

Access the Implementation of Federal Prize and Citizen Science Authority for Fiscal Years 21-22 full report, appendices and survey data here.


Exemplary Projects:


Speakers:

Ann Lewis

Ann Lewis is the Director of Technology Transformation Services (TTS) at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), and runs a team of ~600 technologists working on a variety of platforms, products and programs that bring tech industry best practices and tools into government. Ann is a tech industry veteran, and has held a variety of tech leadership roles, including 2 CTO roles, and Senior Advisor for Technology and Delivery at the U.S. Small Business Administration. Ann is passionate about shipping great products, building great teams, and using tech as a force for good. Ann is based in DC, and holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Kei Koizumi

Kei Koizumi (he/his) is a longtime science-policy leader, science policy researcher, and social scientist in Washington, DC. Since January 2021, he has served at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), currently as Principal Deputy Director for Science, Society, and Policy and previously as Chief of Staff and Acting Director. He is also Acting Executive Director of the National Science and Technology Council. Immediately before the Biden-Harris Administration, he served on the Biden-Harris Transition Team as the lead for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a member of the OSTP transition. Previously, he served as Senior Advisor for Science Policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) between 2017 and 2019. He was Assistant Director for Federal R&D, and Senior Advisor for the National Science and Technology Council, at OSTP from 2009 to 2016 in the Obama Administration. He is a Fellow of the AAAS.

Saul Perlmutter

Saul Perlmutter, PhD, is an astrophysicist and cosmologist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering that the expansion of our universe is accelerating, and is a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). He is also a Franklin W. and Karen Weber Dabby Professor of Physics, and Director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science at University of California, Berkeley, and Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Geraldine (Geri) Richmond

Dr. Geraldine (Geri) Richmond is the Under Secretary for Science and Innovation at the Department of Energy (DOE). In this role she oversees DOE's Office of Science, the nation’s largest federal sponsor of basic research in the physical sciences, DOE’s applied R&D areas of nuclear, fossil, and renewable energy, and energy system integrity, and the DOE national laboratories and their facilities.

Karen Marrongelle

Dr. Karen Marrongelle is the Chief Operating Officer of the National Science Foundation, where she oversees operations of the $10B federal agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering. Previously, she served as Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR). She led the EHR Directorate in supporting research that enhances learning and teaching to achieve excellence in U.S. science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.

Shaibya Dalal

Shaibya Dalal is the Federal Equity and Engagement Lead at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where she leads a team focused on implementing cross-agency efforts to advance equity, improve service delivery, and strengthen how the Federal Government involves the public in decision-making. Most recently, Shaibya coordinated OMB’s work implementing President Biden’s Executive Order 14091 on Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government and launched an OMB initiative to develop the first-ever Federal framework for public participation and community engagement. Before joining OMB in 2021, Shaibya served as Director of Strategic Growth at PolicyLink, leading strategic initiatives to drive equity in Federal policy and within corporate America.

Jonathan Pennock

Dr. Jonathan Pennock serves as the director of the National Sea Grant College Program, having joined NOAA in 2016 from the University of New Hampshire where he served as the deputy-director of the School of Marine Sciences & Ocean Engineering, the director of the New Hampshire Sea Grant College Program and an Associate Professor of Natural Resources and the Environment. Dr. Pennock is a nationally-known coastal scientist with expertise in oceanography and estuarine sciences. His research has focused on understanding human impacts on coastal marine food webs.

Kevin Murphy

Kevin Murphy is the Chief Science Data Officer for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. In this capacity, he works across five divisions to advance the state of the art in cloud computing, machine learning, data management and analysis platforms for NASA’s scientific data, and advocates for open science for all of NASA. Before assuming his current role, Mr. Murphy served as the Program Executive for Earth Science Data Systems programs and the System Architect for EOSDIS, one of the largest repositories of Earth observing data on the planet. He managed the production and distribution of data from NASA’s fleet of over 20 Earth-Observing satellites and instruments including near real-time science data production systems, search engines, scientific data visualization system, evaluation of commercial data, and earthdata.nasa.gov. Mr. Murphy has received numerous awards, including the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement for Engineering, Charles S. Falkenberg Award, Fed 100, among others.

Christopher Frey

Chris Frey is the Assistant Administrator for Research and Development effective May 2022. He also serves as the Agency Science Advisor. Before his confirmation, he served ORD as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science Policy. Prior to joining EPA, Dr. Frey was the Glenn E. and Phyllis J. Futrell Distinguished University Professor at North Carolina State University, where he served on the faculty since 1994. His research includes measurement and modeling of human exposure to air pollution, measurement and modeling of vehicle emissions, and applications of probabilistic and sensitivity analysis methods to emissions estimation, risk assessment, and technology assessment.

Paul Allwood

Paul Allwood, PhD, MPH, RS serves as Branch Chief of the Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch, in CDC's National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH), Division of Environmental Health Science and practice (DEHSP), Atlanta, GA. He directs scientific and programmatic activities Lead Poisoning Prevention throughout the United States. Prior to joining the CDC, Paul worked in various leadership roles in state and local public health agencies, as a professional and academic staff at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Paul strongly believes that all humans deserve the chance to achieve the highest levels of health and well-being they are capable of. He lives near St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife.

Erica Kimmerling

Erica Kimmerling, PhD, is the Assistant Director for Community Driven Health at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). In her previous role as Senior Policy Advisor for Public Engagement in Science, she increased public participation in, and developed policy across, OSTP’s portfolio including Cancer Moonshot, pandemic prevention, STEM equity, and climate and the environment. She also advised on issues related to science communication and engagement, the societal and ethical implications of science, public perception of science, misinformation/disinformation, and building community/civic capacity in science. Prior to OSTP she most recently served as the Senior Advisor for Science Engagement Policy and Partnerships and Civic Science Fellow at the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC).

Karen Andrade

Karen Andrade, PhD, is soon ending her term as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Science, Society and Policy Team at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She is an interdisciplinary environmental health scientist with expertise in community-based participatory research (CBPR). Part microbiologist, part ecologist, whole CBPR practitioner and environmental justice advocate, she earned a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy & Management from the University of California, Berkeley. She also completed postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford and the University of California, Davis where she led biomedical and environmental health research to benefit communities facing environmental injustice. She also worked as a Civic Science Fellow at the Science Philanthropy Alliance where she assisted private science funders, scientists and non-profits in their work at the interface of science, society and equity.

Maryam Zaringhalam

Maryam Zaringhalam is the Assistant Director for Public Access and Research Policy at OSTP. There, she works to coordinate programs and policies advancing the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to providing public access to data, publications, and the other important products of the nation’s taxpayer-supported research and innovation enterprise. She comes to OSTP on detail from the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, where she is the NLM Data Science and Open Science Officer.

Jarah Meador

Jarah leads the crowdsourcing, citizen science and prize competition open innovation portfolio at GSA that includes the Challenge.Gov and CitizenScience.gov. Previously, she led the innovation sourcing program at the Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Innovation and this portfolio included prize competitions, broad agency announcements, and pay for success/social impact financing. The AAAS Science and Policy Technology Fellowship brought her to the federal government at the US Agency for International Development 10 years ago where she led a large-scale desalination technology development prize competition. Jarah earned her PhD in Cancer Biology at the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and is an Air Force Veteran.

Elizabeth MacDonald

Dr. Liz MacDonald is a heliophysicist working for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. She leads a participatory science project called Aurorasaurus, which enlists people to help with community reports, using smartphones and social media to improve predictions of the Northern and Southern Lights. In 2018, along with a large team including many amazing Canadians, they announced a new understanding of an unusual aurora called STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement). She has also led teams that build instruments to measure charged particles in the space environment for NASA and DOE satellite and rocket missions. She serves the NASA HQ participatory science community as the lead of the Heliophysics Strategic working group. Dr. MacDonald has been studying the glitter of the Northern Lights for 25 years.

Sean Bath

Sean Bath is a white, queer, interdisciplinary professional with expertise in policy, planning, and analysis related to environmental science, risk management, and climate change. He has several years of gradually escalating program management experience in the NOAA Climate Adaptation Partnerships Program. In his experience with the program, he has become increasingly convinced of the need to "work at the speed of trust" in building the social infrastructure to withstand the climate crisis. Over the years, he’s focused his contributions to the program in reporting & articulating accomplishments, integrating social justice and equity, and promoting meaningful cultural change in our top-down institutions. In the past year, he has taken on the role of competition manager for the 2024 CAP Funding Opportunity and currently serves on partial detail to NOAA Deputy Administrator Jainey Bavishi to help improve NOAA’s focus on society’s adaptation.

Rao Kotamarthi

Bio coming soon.

Steven Prince

Dr. Prince, a behavioral scientist, studies how people interact with and use information about wildfire smoke and air quality in relation to their health. This includes approaches to understand the context in which information is delivered and the specific behavioral changes that are under consideration. Dr. Prince brings expertise in the cognitive and motivational facets of behavior, and the biases, heuristics, and decision-making context for protective health actions.

Timothy Scheibe

Dr. Timothy D. (Tim) Scheibe has been an Earth Scientist and researcher at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) since 1992. His research dives deep into the fascinating world of fluid flow and biogeochemical reactive transport in subsurface environments. He's currently at the helm of PNNL’s River Corridor Scientific Focus Area project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. This project is a unique blend of field research, lab experiments, and numerical models, all aimed at understanding the ecological impacts of groundwater and surface water exchange. Dr. Scheibe’s expertise is widely recognized, with around 90 publications and book chapters to his name, and he is a respected voice in the field of subsurface biogeochemical modeling and reactive transport modeling. He’s also an active member of the scientific community, serving on the editorial boards of Water, PeerJ, and Frontiers in Water, and previously serving with Groundwater and Hydrogeology Journal. His leadership extends to the American Geophysical Union, where he’s held several volunteer roles. In 2010, the National Ground Water Association honored Dr. Scheibe as the Henry Darcy Distinguished Lecturer. This role took him across North America and Europe, delivering 65 invited lectures. Dr. Scheibe’s work goes beyond traditional discipline-focused academic research, and he also has broad interests in interdisciplinary team research and fostering participatory science and engagement in his field.


Additional Details and Logistics:

GSA TTS Code of Conduct

Please visit here for details.

Event Policies

This event is federal-only and will not be recorded. In addition, we ask attendees to refrain from posting photographs and social media communications during the event.


Food Options

Food and beverage will not be provided. We suggest the following options conveniently located to the event, and within two blocks walking distance:


Questions?

Contact team@challenge.gov


Interior Building Map: Please enter building at the 1800 F Street NW lobby.

Public Engagement with Science Summit: Strategies for Federal Implementation