Purpose
This group will be focused on monitoring policies that can have a beneficial or adverse impact on early career researchers. The Task Force will advocate on behalf of Future of Research and ensure the voice of the board and our members is communicated to Congress, government agencies, and other pertinent stakeholders.
Objectives
- Provide resources and toolkits for early career researchers to advocate for their research programs, scientific workforce issues, and other relevant policy issues.
- Monitor federal policy issues relevant to early career researchers and provide updates to the board.
- Collect data from the early career research community to inform science policy decisions at relevant government agencies and on Capitol Hill.
- Create FoR policy positions from all published studies once papers are published (together with project leads) in non-academic avenues.
Task Force Structure
This group has three sub groups each led by a FoR board member with the potential for additional volunteers. Member advocacy training focuses on outreach, policy tracking focuses on FoR’s mission and stance on issues, and the data collection focuses on creating evidence based policy by surveying information from the biomedical research community.
- Member Advocacy Training
This program will take early career researchers and any member interested through the advocacy program. This subgroup is focused on educating members and also providing tools that can be accessed at any time to prepare for a hill visit, foundation meeting, and more.
2. Policy Tracking
This group is in charge of tracking policies relevant to early career researchers. This includes monitoring for input sought from government agencies like NIH and NSF on new policies and regulations. The leader of the subgroup is in charge of monitoring the federal landscape but may choose to use volunteers to draft responses. The leader remains in close contact with the President of FoR to ensure any stance taken fits the mission and ideals of FoR prior to making a public comment.
3. Data Collection
This mission of this subgroup is to support the creation of evidence based policy. Often policies and regulations are updated, left unchanged, or created with no input from the most impacted stakeholder group. This group will take the time to survey early career researchers to ensure our policy suggestions and policy stances are supported by evidence. This group will take on larger overarching data collection tasks with the intention of providing brief analysis to inform policy decisions.
Task Force Members
- Stephen Albright, Graduate Student, Yale University
- Emma Alme, ASHG/NHGRI Genetics and Public Policy Fellow
- Adriana Bankston, Journal of Science Policy & Governance (JSPG)
- Nicole Parker – Lewis Burke Associates LLC
Advisory Board:
Volunteer Opportunities
Each subgroup has potential volunteer opportunities. Please fill out this form if you are interestd in getting involved.