Scientific Societies Highlight Pandemic Work, Urge NSF to Continue Support

Forty-three scientific societies, including the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), have written to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to highlight the important role scientific associations have played during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Our societies engage in an array of activities, consistent with the goals laid out in the National Science Board’s Vision 2030,” the groups note. “As a key component of the science and engineering ecosystem, we are in a position to provide our expertise and efforts to reach broad segments of the scientific community in ways that other institutions cannot.” The letter lists crucial activities scientific organizations, including AIBS, have engaged in during the pandemic. Important AIBS work highlighted include: AIBS launched “Building More Resilient Societies and Organizations.” A discussion series where leaders from 130 scientific societies and related organizations share resources and identify strategies for tackling issues such as racism and bias in science, building more financially resilient scientific professional associations, and opportunities to deploy new communication tools to foster scientific engagement among scientists from different fields and regions. AIBS partnered with the Natural Science Collections Alliance and the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections to conduct a series of surveys to identify the financial and human resource impacts of COVI...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news