All Webinars

Aligning Open Science with Promotion and Tenure Guidelines

The University of Maryland’s Department of Psychology Leads the Way

October 2023

It has long been recognized that transparent and accessible knowledge enhances scientific integrity and enables greater participation by collaborators outside of academia. However, promotion and tenure guidelines often do not reward open science practices, which often prevents faculty members from pursuing research projects for the public good.

The University of Maryland’s Department of Psychology tackled this problem and, in April 2022, adopted new guidelines that explicitly codify open science as a core criteria in tenure and promotion review. The successful adoption of this new policy presents an opportunity to push for enduring systemic change, to ensure that incentives for advancement reflect the values of faculty members and their institutions.

As Department Chair, webinar speaker Michael Dougherty championed this change and led a multi-year effort to develop and implement the new policy. He was committed to rewarding work that was made broadly available without barriers, but he recognized it would be a culture change that required time. During this webinar, he described the approach that was taken to develop and adopt the new policy, aimed at empowering faculty members to do research in the way that they want to do it, and on the topics that energize them.

Key Takeaway Messages

Administrators can accelerate change efforts by signaling their support, loudly and often.

Administrators are very often open to new ways of doing things.

Faculty members want to do the right thing, but often struggle to do so.

Many faculty members are excited to pursue new cross-sectoral collaborative project.

It can be difficult to imagine a different promotion and tenure system.

Intentionality and persistence are essential for successful change efforts.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

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Webinar Speaker

Michael Dougherty

University of Maryland

Michael Dougherty is Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research and administrative efforts have been driven by a commitment to the view that basic research ought to be guided by real-world problems.

Catalyzing Change by Supporting Embedded Expertise

Researchers and Practitioners Partner to Transform Education and Stimulate Teaching and Learning Excellence

February 2023

Much has been learned in recent years about postsecondary instructional methods that lead to better student learning, but these methods are not yet widely implemented, predominately because their implementation requires a change in academic culture, not simply changes in individual behavior. The “Transforming Education, Stimulating Teaching and Learning Excellence”, or TRESTLE, project is a leading example of ongoing efforts to address this culture-change challenge.

Led by the University of Kansas, TRESTLE is a collaboration of seven research universities that aims to help Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) departments transform undergraduate courses in order to improve undergraduate learning and educational outcomes. The TRESTLE model involves embedding STEM education experts (specially prepared postdoctoral scholars or faculty leaders) in departments, to collaborate with department faculty to guide and support the implementation of research-based educational practices.

In this webinar, TRESTLE leaders Andrea Follmer Greenhoot and Caroline Bennett described the HIBAR research characteristics of the project, and the synergy generated by the “embedded expertise” partnership between researchers and educators. They also shared insights they have gained about catalyzing academic culture change, including how collaboration among similar institutions increases the opportunity for good ideas to emerge and spread.

Key Takeaway Messages

Deep partnerships between researchers and practitioners enables rapid iteration of practice-informed improvements.

When institutions collaborate on change efforts, good ideas emerge and spread more quickly.

Institutional change initiatives are more often most effective if they are situated within a unit that has broad reach

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

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Webinar Speakers

Andrea Follmer Greenhoot

University of Kansas

Dr. Andrea (“Dea”) Follmer Greenhoot is Professor of Psychology, Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and Gautt Teaching Scholar at the University of Kansas. Dea serves as Director of the Bay View Alliance and is principle investigator of the BVA’s TRESTLE project..

Caroline Bennett

University of Kansas

Dr. Caroline Bennett is Professor of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and Dean R. and Florence W. Frisbie Associate Chair of Graduate Studies at the University of Kansas. She also serves as a campus leader for the TRESTLE project.

Building Sustained Research-Practice Partnerships

A targeted funding program enables research institutions to shift their policies and practices to value collaborative research

January 2023

Research-practice partnerships bring together experts from the research and practice communities to develop a joint research agenda to address pressing questions. However, despite its considerable benefits, collaborative work of this type is not always valued by universities and, as a result, policies and practices within universities can inadvertently create disincentives for faculty members to participate in research-practice partnerships.

In response to these obstacles, the William T. Grant Foundation established the Institutional Challenge Grant program, encouraging research institutions to remove barriers that inhibit collaborative work. In addition to supporting an existing institutional partnership to pursue a joint research agenda, these grants enable changes in institutional policy and practice to value research-practice partnerships and enhance the capacity of researchers and practitioners to together produce and use high-quality rigorous research results.

In this webinar, W. T. Grant Foundation Senior Program Officer Jenny Irons described how the Institutional Challenge Grant program supports universities in building sustained research-practice partnerships that will reduce inequality in youth outcomes. Grant recipient Alicia Sasser Modestino from Northeastern University described how the funding has enabled a lasting partnership with The City of Boston’s Department of Youth Engagement and Employment, and created a number of organizational change efforts within the university aimed at building a supportive infrastructure and changing what it means to be a “successful researcher” at the university.

While these grants are intended specifically to enable research-practice partnerships, the institutional changes they create will more broadly enable researchers to participate in HIBAR projects, as well as other forms of community-engaged research. We are delighted to share this inspirational funding initiative with the HIBAR Research Alliance community as part of our webinar series.

Key Takeaway Messages

Successful changes within academic departments can catalyze broader institutional change.

For a change effort to succeed, it is important to identify and act upon the levers for change.

Research teams may find it surprisingly challenging to convey what societal impact looks like for the problem they are addressing.

Many faculty members benefit greatly from ongoing coaching for building effective relationships with external partners.

Building and sustaining an effective research relationship takes a great deal of time.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

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Webinar Speakers

Jenny Irons

William T. Grant Foundation

Jenny Irons is a Senior Program Officer at the William T. Grant Foundation, where she leads the Institutional Challenge Grant program and the major grants funding initiative to support research on reducing inequality among youth. She serves on the Foundation’s senior program team, which sets program directions, develops new initiatives, and reviews grants.

Alicia Sasser Modestino

Northeastern University

Alicia Sasser Modestino is an Associate Professor with appointments in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Department of Economics at Northeastern University, where she also serves as the Research Director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy.

The USF Pandemic Response Research Network

Lessons Learned through a Highly Integrative Basic and Responsive Research (HIBAR) Approach to COVID-19

December 2022

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the significant threats that pandemics pose to all aspects of our lives, including physical and mental health, economics, education, environment, public policy, and communication. Given the complexity, diversity, and speed of these global impacts, governments, institutions, and individuals must collectively develop and implement multidisciplinary and timely approaches to mitigate them. Universities provide a critical asset for addressing pandemic mitigation, as these institutions possess broad intellectual capital that can be leveraged to guide national and global responses.

Universities across the world responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in different ways, implementing a variety of strategies that link disciplinary expertise with specific societal needs. The University of South Florida took a unique and effective approach, by adapting a rapid response research network concept that essentially integrates HIBAR principles to address the wide-ranging aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The webinar speakers discussed the USF Pandemic Response Research Network (USF-PRRN), highlighting the HIBAR features of the network and how the USF-PRRN concept can be applied to other global challenges. They described:

USF’s initial leadership response to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Pandemic;
how USF leveraged its intellectual capital;
the formation of a HIBAR Pandemic Response Network;
how USF provided institutional incentives;
the long-term sustainability of the network;
the institutional return on investment; and
models for HIBAR research networks that can meet current emergent global challenges.

You can read more here about the USF Pandemic Research Response Network and how the concept can be applied to address other global challenges.

Key Takeaway Messages

When presented with a HIBAR research opportunity, faculty members will readily engage.

HIBAR research networks are powerful tools for enabling culture change.

HIBAR research networks enable long-term partnerships because they dynamically respond as the research evolves.

Through HIBAR research networks, faculty members discover colleagues who deeply share their interests.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

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Webinar Speakers

Randy W. Larsen

Associate Dean for Research
College of Arts & Sciences

Sylvia Wilson Thomas

Interim Vice President
for Research & Innovation

Howard Goldstein

Associate Dean for Research
College of Behavioral & Community Sciences

Permanent Carbon Removal

Creating sustainable solutions for permanent carbon removal at scale

November 2022

There is an urgent global effort to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in order to mitigate climate change. While many industries are striving to transition away from the fossil fuels-based energy sources that have generated this atmospheric carbon dioxide, it is widely understood that a full transition to renewable energy sources will take several decades, and in the meantime there will be an ongoing reliance on fossil fuels. As a result, parallel efforts to develop effective strategies for reducing atmospheric carbon emissions, by capturing and storing the carbon dioxide, are an essential part of the global climate change mitigation effort. The next decade is critical for scaling up and commercializing carbon removal technologies.

UCLA’s Institute for Carbon Management (ICM), led by Professor Gaurav Sant, is tackling this challenge of creating and developing sustainable solutions for carbon removal, and demonstrating that they are effective at a scale that is globally relevant in a range of carbon-intensive industries, including power plants and cement and concrete manufacturers. The technologies they have developed ensure carbon removal that is both durable and permanent, locking away the carbon for thousands of years or more.

The work at ICM is an excellent example of HIBAR research: projects pursue new knowledge that is needed to develop solutions to an urgent and global problem, in deep partnership with experts in industry, government, and non-profit organizations. Webinar speakers Gaurav Sant and Thomas Traynor will describe how ICM approaches this HIBAR work, including the challenges of demonstrating technology scalability in a university laboratory environment and bridging skills gaps by integrating experienced industry professionals within the university-based team. With this approach, ICM has demonstrated that it can successfully navigate a field that is moving quickly and is likely to have near-term global impact.

Key Takeaway Messages

As a form of cross-sectoral partnership, universities can hire knowledgeable, experienced people from outside universities to co-lead HIBAR projects.

The university environment offers greater intellectual and funding flexibility for HIBAR projects than the industrial environment.

Balance in team composition is needed for HIBAR projects to be agile and pivot quickly.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

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Webinar Speakers

Gaurav Sant

Pritzker Professor of Sustainability
Director, UCLA Institute for Carbon Management

Thomas Traynor

Technical Lead, Technology Translation Team
UCLA Institute for Carbon Management

Asking Different Questions

Providing students with tools to produce more inclusive, accurate, and ultimately impactful research results

October 2022

Asking Different Questions, a new graduate student training program developed at the University of California, Davis, is aimed at giving early career researchers a more solid foundation to do cross-sectoral research, by providing them with the intellectual tools they need to produce more inclusive, accurate, and ultimately impactful research results.

The program was inspired by decades of research that revealed how historical precedents, cultural norms, and systems of power continue to bias scientific research and technological innovation. Funded by a National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award, Asking Different Questions tackles an important challenge facing universities, namely that research across science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields takes place within a larger societal context that is often not reflected in the research questions that are explored. The program was developed to provide students with the training needed to recognize and address the real-world complexities within their research context.

Highly Integrative Basic and Responsive (HIBAR) research projects are co-led by people in academia and society who work in an equitable partnership and integrate the core goals of seeking new knowledge and addressing a problem in society. Shared goals and shared decision-making are essential components of these partnerships, and the diverse perspectives that partners bring to the project mean that, together, they make wiser decisions about the direction, participants, and activities within the project – from the start and throughout.

The Asking Different Questions curriculum equips researchers with skills needed to build trusted cross-sectoral partnerships, and the HIBAR Research Alliance is delighted to showcase the program as part of our 2022-2023 webinar series.

Key Takeaway Messages

Substantive and lasting change requires changing the overall system and culture.

It is vital for universities to make space for graduate students to pursue HIBAR research.

Universities, can, and should, support graduate students as change leaders.

Be more flexible about what defines an academic discipline.

Make space for insights from PhD committee members from outside the discipline.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

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Webinar Speaker

Dr. Sarah Rebolloso McCullough

Associate Director Feminist Research Institute University of California, Davis

Dr. Sarah Rebolloso McCullough, Associate Director of the Feminist Research Institute at the University of California, Davis, described how the Asking Different Questions program creates meaningful and respectful dialogue across boundaries that typically divide—between universities and communities, activists and researchers, scientists and humanists, workers and policymakers.

The Future of Genomic Medicine

Developing lipid nanoparticle delivery systems laid the groundwork for COVID-19 vaccines and the future of medicine

April 2022

Jointly presented by the HIBAR Research Alliance and the National Academy of Inventors.

During the record-breaking sprint to develop mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, developers faced a key challenge: they needed a drug delivery system that would enable the messenger RNA, or mRNA, to get into cells in the body. Fortunately, this was not the first time this challenge had been encountered, because the delivery of RNA or DNA to cells to prevent or treat disease at its genetic root cause has been under development for decades, and the success of the COVID-19 vaccine is the tip of the iceberg for genetic medicine.

This delivery solution uses lipid nanoparticles – microscopic bubbles of fat – to encase and protect the mRNA and enable it to be taken up by a cell and released inside to produce the desired immune response. Decades of research in lipid systems enabled the dramatic speed of the COVID-19 vaccine development, from concept to clinical trials within 3 months of sequencing the viral genome. The groundwork for lipid nanoparticle delivery systems was laid more than 40 years ago in the lab of Dr. Pieter Cullis at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Since then, he has played a founding role in a number of companies developing pharmaceutical solutions based on drug delivery research, including Inex Pharmaceuticals, Acuitas Therapeutics, and Precision Nanosystems.

Prior to a year or so ago, lipid nanoparticles were relatively unknown, despite the decades of effort by many researchers to demonstrate their value as drug delivery systems. As a result of the demonstrated success of the COVID-19 vaccine, lipid nanoparticle–RNA drugs are now poised to cause a revolution in medicine, because of their ability to deliver precision gene therapy drugs to treat a wide range of diseases, and to enable vaccines for many other infectious diseases.

Key Takeaway Messages

HIBAR research projects are often challenging in many ways, but they are immensely enjoyable and rewarding.

New approaches to graduate student training are needed to better address the challenges facing society.

There is growing support for public-private research partnerships tackling big challenges.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

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Webinar Speakers

Peter Cullis

Professor, University of British Columbia

James Taylor

CEO, Precision Nanosystem

Collaborators Dr. Pieter Cullis (Professor, University of British Columbia) and Dr. James Taylor (Co-founder and CEO, Precision Nanosystems) described the HIBAR research journey that led to the global vaccine success, the prospects for a revolution in genomic medicines, and some of the HIBAR research challenges they faced along the way.

The Impact of Direct Giving

Experimental evidence suggesting that unconditional cash transfers can be effective for reducing homelessness

November 2021

Homelessness is a growing social, economic, and health crisis. A research team based in Vancouver, Canada, is tackling this crisis through the New Leaf project, a HIBAR research project investigating whether unconditional cash transfers can empower people to move beyond homelessness. This innovative intervention has the potential to reduce homelessness through an agentic approach beyond the provision of emergency services such as shelters and meal programs. This project is a partnership between Foundations for Social Change, a charitable organization that develops evidence-based solutions to advance social change, and the University of British Columbia.

The New Leaf research team conducted the world’s first randomized controlled trial examining the impact of unconditional cash transfers on individuals experiencing homelessness. In this trial, they distributed a one-time unconditional cash transfer of $7,500 to each of 50 homeless individuals in Vancouver, with another group of 65 as controls. The results of the trial demonstrate that the cash transfers led to significant improvements in housing stability, food security, savings, employment, and cognitive function, with no increases in spending on temptation goods. Based on a cost-benefit analysis, the cash transfer produced $600 net savings per person per year via reduced social service use. The research findings suggest that unconditional cash transfers can be an effective solution to reduce homelessness. Preparations for an expanded trial in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, are underway.

Webinar speakers Jiaying Zhao, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, and Alice Hopkins, Program Manager at Foundations for Social Change, described how the research partnership developed and how the team applied advances in behavioural sciences, cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics to demonstrate that direct giving is an effective tool to quickly reintroduce stability into people’s lives.

Key Takeaway Messages

Co-leadership has been an essential component throughout the project.

Cross-sectoral diversity was powerfully important for conveying results to key audiences.

With good project design, academic rigor and practicality are compatible.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

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Webinar Speakers

Alice Hopkins

Program Manager
Foundations for Social

Jiaying Zhao

Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair
University of British Columbia

Rebuilding Civic Education

Educating for American Democracy embraced complexity and controversy to achieve unexpected consensus

October 2021

The constitutional democracy of the United States is in peril, and there is a widespread loss of confidence in government and civic order. Generations of students have not received the high quality education in history and civics that they need, and deserve, to prepare them for informed and engaged citizenship, and the time has come to rebuild civic education. Leaders of an inspiring and large-scale HIBAR research project, the Educating for American Democracy initiative, set out to tackle the challenge of developing a balanced, national-consensus framework and a proposed plan of action for civic and history education.

In this webinar, three key participants described their collective journey to work together, even through many disagreements, and across diverse and numerous stakeholders, toward a shared goal to fundamentally improve civics education in the United States. In part because of the process, the EAD team produced a robust framework that has gained overwhelming support from the K-12 civics and history communities, and well beyond.

Educating for American Democracy (EAD) is an unprecedented effort that convened a diverse group of scholars and educators to create a Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy. This required acquiring a deep, evidence-based understanding of key issues from many perspectives and creatively designing, developing, and evaluating new approaches. The roadmap provides guidance and an inquiry framework that states, local school districts, and educators can use to transform teaching of history and civics to meet the needs of a diverse 21st century K–12 student body. The work was supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education.

The webinar speakers described how the initiative brought together hundreds of ideologically, philosophically, and demographically diverse historians, political scientists, and educators. The project required multiple task forces and working groups, each one grappling with a key design challenge. Together, the collaborators learned to approach disagreement and controversy as an opportunity for learning rather than as a problem to be overcome and, in doing so, they achieved much greater consensus than they had anticipated. The creative tension that resulted from conflicting priorities and perspectives was productively harnessed, leading to energetic debate, new perspectives, and alternative approaches that would not otherwise have been developed. The presenters shared their experience and thoughts about how the lessons they learned may be applied to HIBAR research challenges in other fields.

Key Takeaway Messages

Complexity and controversy can lead to a strong consensus.

Strategies for maintaining functional conflict are essential for reaching a consensus.

Effective approaches are needed to communicate with different groups of stakeholders.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

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Webinar Speakers

Paul Carrese

Founding Director
School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership
Arizona State University

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg

Director, Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRLCE)
Tufts University

Tammy Waller

Director of K-12 Social Studies
and World Languages
Arizona Department of Education

Improving the National Flood Insurance Program

How psychology and economics can be brought together to inform and drive policy

June 2021

Dr. Howard Kunreuther, from the University of Pennsylvania, spoke about how psychology and economics can be brought together to help society better manage low-probability, high-consequence events related to technological and natural hazards. Our innate human biases make it difficult for us to assess the risk of unlikely events, and it is important to understand that while we cannot prevent these biases, it is both possible and necessary to develop and implement policies that manage the risks appropriately. Dr. Kunreuther’s work has required deep and long-term collaborations with a wide range of partners, including policy makers, insurance providers, and disaster management experts.

He described the specific example of how biases related to risk assessment lead people to decide against buying flood insurance, despite living in flood-prone areas. His work has shown that a behavioral risk audit can assist in designing a strategy to both encourage property owners to purchase insurance and to invest in cost-effective measures to protect themselves against future disaster losses. This work has informed new policies recently developed by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and currently under debate within the U.S. Congress.

Protection against disastrous flood losses is just one example of the importance of behavioral economics in informing and driving effective policies. The current coronavirus pandemic has intensely highlighted the destructive consequences of our inability to intuitively grasp the concepts of exponential growth, and we have the opportunity to learn from this pandemic experience to address the exponentially growing threat of climate change. Dr. Kunreuther briefly described how society’s response to exponential growth processes, whether or not we are able to recognize them, needs to be swift and aggressive, and co-led, use-inspired basic (HIBAR) research is at the center of this work.

Howard Kunreuther was co-director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author, with Robert Meyer, of The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters (Wharton School Press, 2017).

Key Takeaway Messages

Take the time to learn what is truly of interest to potential research partners.

Anecdotes and stories can be powerful for motivating people in various ways.

Develop guiding principles and a broad framework for your work.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

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Watch key excerpts from the webinar

Webinar Speaker

Dr. Howard Kunreuther

University of Pennsylvania